My years fencing for Penn State were some of the best in my career as a fencer. One of the reasons I'd originally chosen fencing was that it is, for the most part, an individual sport. I didn't want teamates to have to rely on me, too many bad memories from elementary school gym class. I wanted to compete for myself and only myself without being put at risk of becoming "the goat" of a team.
When I started fencing NCAA's all of that had to change. NCAA's are fenced in a team format so individual victories and defeats all go towards the team's point standing. I hated this at first. I can't stand to let people down and this format put me in a posistion where that could very well happen. The unexpected effect though was that I pushed myself that much harder in training.
Practices at Penn State were generally not as physically or mentally demanding as those at RFC. They were shorter with less intense footwork, conditioning, and drilling. There were two things though that pushed me much farther than I ever could have gone at RFC. The bouting was more intense and with more teamates, and the individual lessons I got made those at RFC look like a stroll through the park. For one thing they were usually about 45 minutes long versus the 20 at RFC. For another I had to go at full speed the entire lesson. The motivating factor in this was my coach, Wes. He's a former 7 time polish national champion and Olympic saber coach. If you've ever seen video of Navy Seal instructors working over trainees then you have a basic idea of one of his lessons. If it wasn't right, do it again. You're tired? So what. If you don't want to train, why did you show up? Two things were made clear very early on. One, he was going to kick your ass all up and down the strip. Two, you volenteered for it.
There was method to the madness though. By putting his students through the physical and mental strain of his lessons you really got ready for those bouts where it's tied up 4-4 and the next touch means victory or defeat not just for you but for your whole team. If you can deal with a screaming Pole chaseing you all over the place with a saber, trying to land a cut on some bit of exposed skin, you can handle that situation pretty well. There was a distinct difference though between his antics and those of my first coach (Yell). Where as Yell would just be mad at you that you didn't do it right, Wes would yell at you because he knew you could do it better. Even if you caught a shot accross the ribs or on the elbow there wasn't malice behind it. It still hurt, but when your coach is standing there chuckling and telling you that his grandmother could do it better as opposed to screaming obscenities at you there is a different dynamic at play. One other thing about Wes, he always coaches to the level of his student. He reserves this kind of treatment for those who have been training hard for a long time, have reached a high level of competency, and are trying to push past their current limits. When he's working with kids he's a teddy bear.
I got over my insecurity of team competition and really began to love it. The greater stress of other's counting on my performance continued to drive my training and push my limits. Not only that but I formed very strong friendships with my teammates because of it. I remember my first week at PSU one of the other freshman fencers was talking about how she'd had these great world cup results and that NCAA fencing was a joke and just her way of paying for college. By the end of the year that same girl was as rabid about winning championships as our coaches. There were those on the team who I think fenced only because it would look good on a resume or because of the higher status and privlidges student athletes recieve, these people were for the most part ignored by the real competitors on the team. Even the occasional good fencer fell into this category, but if you weren't dead serious about winning you weren't really part of the team. In fact there were a few people who were there on scholarship or even full athletic grant who didn't have the necessary mind set to conistently train hard, support their teammates, and win. These fencers almost always fell by the wayside principally because of a lack of commitment. Conversely there were fencers on the team that received no extra benefits who worked their asses off. These were the people you could always count on to give you their best. It was this core group of fencers that made PSU win time after time regardless of if they had fenced in the competition or not. Frankly I'll always prefer to be on the team with the hardest workers versus the team with tons of talent but no drive. It was this attitude that created a culture of winning at Penn State.
We were expected to win, and we worked to dominate our opponents. There are plenty of victories in my memory where our adversaries didn't win a single bout. We even had a rule that if you were the only person to drop a bout to an opposing team, you had to buy the keg for the victory party. We ruthlessly enforced this too. Once, my teammate Mike tore his meniscus during warm up before a dual meet. We only had three for the saber squad so rather than forfeit his bouts he fenced anyway without telling the trainer (If he had they wouldn't have let him fence). He still had a winning day but he was the only person to drop a bout to two different teams so he was obligated to buy two kegs, which he later negotiated to one keg of good beer. Granted he complied after a great deal of bitching and moaning but by doing so he set an example for the team. The next year he was elected team captain even though he was still somewhat hobbled from his injury. Plus he got the added bonus of telling that story anytime an incoming freshman complained about anything team related.
Each of the three years I competed for Penn State we won NCAA Championships and I made second team All-American. The first by just a few points, the second by what I think is the widest margin in NCAA history, and the third again by just a few points. My junior year was the last year I competed for PSU. I was at the pinnacle of my skill level and athletic ability. Every dual meet I put myself in as the anchor and I didn't lose any 4-4 team matches. At NCAA Champs the men fenced second and blew the lead that the women had generated on the first two days, I fenced mediorce at best. The second day I lost my first bout and I could see the looks of disapointment on my teammates and coaches faces. I decided that having any anxiety about winning or losing my bouts wasn't going to help me at all and I just let it all drop away. How I did this I can't say because I don't know, but every action became totally natural, obvious, and without effort. I was in the zone. The day turned into my single best day as a competitor. That first loss was my only loss of the day, I was untouchable after that. All of the men's team dug deep that day and in the end we were the victors. St. John's took second and to give them credit they fenced like absolute madmen. Not only did we only beat them by only a few points but they didn't have a full team that year. PSU had qualified 12 fencers while they had only 11. After the competiton some of my teammates were upset that the victory had been so close and that they personally hadn't contributed as much as they thought they should have. I pointed out though that without the wins they had accumulated we wouldn't have won at all, and that "Dumbass, that's why we're a team."
End of part II
Friday, July 4, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The history of a fencer, part I.
I started fencing at age thirteen (sixteen years ago) at Rochester Fencing Centre, (it's now the Rochester Fencing Club.) It is a great club, one of the best in the country. The reason that it's such a great club is that the training regime there is freaking TOUGH! Mandatory practice was Monday through Friday from 4-6pm. And like I said that was just the mandatory practice. As I got a little older I'd go right from school and get to the club around three, warm up, get a lesson, work on footwork or bladework, and then start practice at four. From four to four thirty was all footwork and god help you if the head coach was leading footwork. If he was it meant you were lunging until your legs were cramping, doing footwork suicides until you couldn't breathe, and if you didn't work hard enough he'd have you do it again and again until you met his expectations. Did it hurt? Yes. Was it worth it? Yes.
Before I started fencing I'd done all of the usual sports kids do, i.e. baseball, soccer, etc. I was by far the worst athlete out there. I had zero coordination, no fitness to speak of, and I didn't enjoy being sweaty. To make matters worse almost everybody in my family was an athlete of some kind. My Dad was a pretty good tennis player. My Mom was a good runner. My Step-dad lettered in three sports in high school, was a pitcher in college, and was recruited by the Yankees and Pirates (He had just started a family though and turned them down). Both of his children were all-state swimmers who earned athletic scholarships to college. So with all of this competitive drive and talent surrounding me I was the chubby kid who would rather read a book than play catch. In fact, throughout sixth grade I opted out of recess so I could stay inside and read. All of this lethargy had serious repercussions though, I was forced to take remedial gym class.
For most people gym class is kind of a joke. You play dodge ball, run around a bit, do some jumping jacks, and then it's off to art class. Well not for me. I was a magnet for dodge balls. I tripped when I ran because I walked on the insides of my feet and had to wear special shoes. Jumping jacks made my belly shake. Gym class sucked. In it's infinite wisdom, the school realized how difficult this all was for me and so they decided to help me out by adding two extra gym classes to my weekly schedule. And not just the ordinary hellacious kind of gym class, but remedial gym class. For the uninitiated (and for your sake I hope you are) remedial gym class consisted of the special-ed kids and the fat kids running wind sprints and playing a game with a parachute and Nerf balls called popcorn. If video of this every made it to youtube it would climb to the top of the viewing charts. Just imagine the comedic gold of fat kids being chased by retarded kids. It's horrible and not at all PC but I was one of the fat kids and I can't help but laugh at it now. And the reason we were running was because a couple of the special ed kids bit, hard. Ah, the irony of a fat kid becoming a food source.
When I was twelve I switched schools and decided to completely change my life. Thankfully over the summer I'd had a growth spurt and so was not longer the pudgy kid. I was now the stick figure kid, and I still am. I reasoned out that in order to get some kind of balance in my life between brain and body I would have to learn a sport and actually stick with it,and it had to be something that nobody I knew did. This was because I knew I was going to be terrible (at least at first), and because everybody else had a head start on the normal sports. I thought about different martial arts but the idea of being kicked in the face didn't exactly thrill me, and brain damage wasn't high on my list of priorities. Driving through the city one day I saw a sign that said ROCHESTER FENCING CENTRE (RFC). Fencing! Of course! Nobody knew anything about fencing! I begged my parents for months. The were dubious. After all I'd quit every other sport pretty much right after they'd bought me my equipment. Also I don't think my Mom was to thrilled with the idea of me fighting in any sense of the word. She'd grown up in the 60's outside of San Francisco and was so nonviolent she didn't like me even having water pistols (She had "accidental" ran over my .44 magnum squirt gun.) And lastly, did they really want their son learning to fight with swords from someone who couldn't spell "center" correctly? (Turns out centre is the French spelling, but I never saw a french person at RFC so go figure.) Eventually they relented and for my thirteenth birthday present I was allowed to try fencing. I think they figured they had gotten off easy and this would be another thing I'd walk away from in a few months. Little did they know that it was the beginning of a huge investment in time and thousands upon thousands of dollars.
My first few months at the club I practiced two nights a week for about an hour a practice and got basic instruction from one of the more experienced saber fencers. When school let out at the beginning of summer I was invited to start regular practice at the club, which in the summer was two practices a day at two hours each, 4 days a week. These included weight lifting, footwork, drilling, bouting and lessons. It was a complete 180 from my sedentary lifestyle, but I was enjoying myself and could now run a mile without throwing up! The RFC was above a auto parts store and had/has? no air conditioning in a city with mid-80 temps and very high humidity in the summer. (I love seeing movies with fencing clubs in them and the walls are all beautiful wood paneling and it basically looks like an old library without the books. Real fencing clubs are never like this. They usually smell, often have poor ventilation, rarely have windows, and almost never have air conditioning. Except my current club, so in your face everybody else!) So yeah, I got over my not liking to sweat issue.
I started taking lessons from the head coach that summer and frankly he scared the crap out of me. He still does and I'm now a grown man with six inches on him and some training in Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu . Don't get me wrong, he's one of the best coaches in the U.S. and has generated fantastic results from his students. Also in his defense I've heard he's mellowed out just a little tiny bit. But at the time it was not uncommon to hear obscenities being screamed at little girls, masks being sent flying through the air into unsuspecting walls, and student's going to the locker room after a lesson to have a good cry (You did NOT cry during your lesson, it only made him mad.) This was also back in the day when you did not wear a jacket during your lesson. This was not for comforts sake. It was so if you didn't parry fast enough you would end up with a nice red welt as a reminder to parry faster next time. Or to keep your elbow in. Or to recover from your lunge faster. Or to keep you back hand from covering target. Or to keep your front knee straight ahead. B.F. Skinner would have loved to observe one of these lessons, they were a perfect demonstration of negative reinforcement. I'm not an advocate of this coaching style. It doesn't fit my personality or my beliefs, but he always got results and I never saw him make a student do something that they weren't capable of doing. In fact, you usually did things in your lesson that you didn't believe you were capable of at first because the extra motivation of pain avoidance pushed you that much further. That pretty much sums up being his student. He pushes you farther than you think you can go, then he pushes some more.
My first lesson with him is a blur. I remember standing at attention a lot, addressing him as sir (Later he asked my Mom if I'd been to military school), and getting smacked in my elbow because I had bad technique with my three parry. After the lesson was over I had a few marks but nothing serious and was pretty proud that I hadn't lost control of my bowels. On my second lesson I realized two things, one was that I was now definitely his student, and two was that he'd gone easy on me in my first lesson.
At the end of summer I was asked to join the elite team at RFC which meant I would practice every weekday and receive at least two lessons per week. I accepted and my whole life and the life of my family started to revolve around fencing. Grades were kept up not to maintain a good GPA but because if they dropped I wouldn't be allowed to fence. Christmas and birthday presents started taking on the form of fencing equipment. My parents left work early or stayed late to get me to and from practice everyday. And almost all of my friends were fencers. When you train with people day in and day out and sweat and bleed and win and lose and sometimes cry on their shoulder you find out what friendship really is. I'm not in contact with anybody I went to high school with unless they were a fencer with me at RFC.
In February of my 8th grade year I went to my first national tournament, Junior Olympics (JO's) in Colorado Springs. I fenced the U-15, U-17, and U-20. I don't remember my final places but I did pretty well for not having fenced even a full year yet (I think I made the 16 in U-15, the 32 in U-17, and got first rounded in U-20.). After this competition I was completely hooked. I was thirteen years old and missing school to stay in a hotel halfway across the country with my friends and compete in a sport that I loved with kids from all across the country. Is there anything better?
I trained harder and started to go to North American Cups (NACs). We got a new coach at RFC for sabre who was a former Junior National Champion in the Ukraine. A year later he went to college and we Got a former Junior Champion from Poland as our coach. A year later he went off to school along with most of the sabre fencers at RFC leaving me and my one remaining teammate. Our new coach was a fantastic fencer. He'd already competed for the U.S. in four Olympics and would go on to compete in his fifth while he was our coach. Unfortunately he didn't fence saber, he fenced foil and epee. I was doubtful as to the success of this arrangement. My first meeting with this coach didn't help much. At Jo's in Little Rock I was bent over looking through my fencing bag when somebody comes up from behind me and kicks me in the ass sending me headfirst into my equipment. I assumed it was one of my friends so I jumped up and spun around ready to smack him in the face, but instead of my friend there is this goofy looking guy standing there with a grin on his face. I of course immediately ingratiate myself by saying "Who the fuck are you and why did you kick me?" The grin remained and he said, "I'm your new coach, get used to getting your butt kicked." and with that he walked away. A few months later he showed up in Rochester and we started a whole new kind of training.
I'm going to refer to this coach as Grin. For those in the fencing world it won't take much effort to find out who Grin is, but I don't want to be held liable so his name here is Grin. Grin is a freaking excellent coach and the emotional opposite of my first coach, lets call him Yell. If Grin taught me anything it was that fencing, and life in general, is a game and meant to be played. If you can't have fun, what's the point? Not to say that he didn't make us work our butts off in practice, but where Yell would yell at you to work harder or smack you with a weapon, Grin would motivate you by making you want to beat him so damn bad you had to choke back tears of frustration when he'd crush you in a game. There are few things more aggravating than being beaten by a impish man with a grin who because he's beaten you makes you refer to him as "King". And all the while he made it fun. Grin wasn't great at teaching saber technique, but damn my footwork got really good through his coaching. Almost all the footwork drills I do with my student's now are the same as the ones Grin did with me. They focus not only on the technique of footwork, but also on maintaining a flexible mind and the tactics of distance and timing.
After two years of working with Grin and fencing the same teammate every single day for two hours I graduated high school and was recruited by Penn State (WE ARE, PENN STATE!). When I joined the PSU team as a freshman they were three time NCAA Div 1 consecutive champions and had already won five NCAA Championships that decade. The problem was that many of their top fencers had graduated the year before and my class was a rebuilding year. Not many people really expected much from us except our teammates and our coaches. Right from the get go it was made clear to us by our teammates that if you were a good fencer your primary responsibility was to the team. You did not miss practice. You did not skip lessons. And you definitely showed up to every fencing party. One of the great things about the team was it didn't matter so much how long you'd been on the team. What mattered most was how good a fencer you were and how committed to improving you were. There were people on the team that weren't very good and didn't really try and it didn't matter if you were a freshman and they were a senior, you could ignore their bs. The funny thing was it was these people who were always telling the freshmen to carry their bag or chug their beer! WTF! Practice at Penn State was tough but not as tough as RFC. I went there thinking how I was going to be getting crushed at practice and dieing during physical conditioning but really it wasn't bad. The reason being it was me, one other freshman, and two sophomores for saber. That's it. The other freshman was a really solid fencer from Atlanta who became one of my best friends and constant practice partner, I will refer to him from now on as DB (He knows why). In fact, usually it was just him and I for saber at practice (Except for the time it was only me because he was hung over from playing street fighter for shots.). Out of the other saber fencers, one was kind of a pot head who ended up quitting the team because he was called up for a drug test and would have failed. And the other had been switched to saber from foil, but had to redshirt that year. So that left me and DB. Surprisingly, at the end of the year we managed to qualify a full team for NCAA championships. NCAA fencing is different from fencing at NAC's. It's team based rather than individual. You have three fencers and an alternate per weapon. Those people will fence members of another team scoring 1 point for their team for every bout they win. At the end of the meet the team with the highest points wins. At NCAA champs it's like this but every bout you win counts as one point for your team and everybody fences in a huge round robin over the course of two days. At the end of the competition the team with the highest number of points wins. Not only this but men's and women's results are combined so there is no Men's NCAA Team Champion and Women's NCAA Team Champion, just The NCAA Team Champion (school) and individual champions who were the leaders in points in their respective weapon and who won two direct elimination bouts starting from the top four. Anyway, miracle of miracles we qualified a full team and went to Notre Dame for NCAA Championships.
The great part is that Notre Dame were our chief rivals and we'd defeated them the last three years to win NCAA Championships. Now we were on their turf and they had a strong veteran team. Pretty much everybody thought they'd pull out the victory and Penn State's streak would end. Everybody but the fencers and coaches of Penn State. You know the saying "going into the lion's den" well that's what we were doing. The thing was though, we were the lions. We were lions going into the den of Fighting Irishmen. Granted they were Fighting Irishmen, but nobody wants a lion in their den. They have a tendency to eat people or at the least bite off limbs. So long story short we won 149-147 and I finished in 6th earning 2nd Team All-American Honors. Never before or since have I ever experienced so sweet a victory.
End of Part 1
Before I started fencing I'd done all of the usual sports kids do, i.e. baseball, soccer, etc. I was by far the worst athlete out there. I had zero coordination, no fitness to speak of, and I didn't enjoy being sweaty. To make matters worse almost everybody in my family was an athlete of some kind. My Dad was a pretty good tennis player. My Mom was a good runner. My Step-dad lettered in three sports in high school, was a pitcher in college, and was recruited by the Yankees and Pirates (He had just started a family though and turned them down). Both of his children were all-state swimmers who earned athletic scholarships to college. So with all of this competitive drive and talent surrounding me I was the chubby kid who would rather read a book than play catch. In fact, throughout sixth grade I opted out of recess so I could stay inside and read. All of this lethargy had serious repercussions though, I was forced to take remedial gym class.
For most people gym class is kind of a joke. You play dodge ball, run around a bit, do some jumping jacks, and then it's off to art class. Well not for me. I was a magnet for dodge balls. I tripped when I ran because I walked on the insides of my feet and had to wear special shoes. Jumping jacks made my belly shake. Gym class sucked. In it's infinite wisdom, the school realized how difficult this all was for me and so they decided to help me out by adding two extra gym classes to my weekly schedule. And not just the ordinary hellacious kind of gym class, but remedial gym class. For the uninitiated (and for your sake I hope you are) remedial gym class consisted of the special-ed kids and the fat kids running wind sprints and playing a game with a parachute and Nerf balls called popcorn. If video of this every made it to youtube it would climb to the top of the viewing charts. Just imagine the comedic gold of fat kids being chased by retarded kids. It's horrible and not at all PC but I was one of the fat kids and I can't help but laugh at it now. And the reason we were running was because a couple of the special ed kids bit, hard. Ah, the irony of a fat kid becoming a food source.
When I was twelve I switched schools and decided to completely change my life. Thankfully over the summer I'd had a growth spurt and so was not longer the pudgy kid. I was now the stick figure kid, and I still am. I reasoned out that in order to get some kind of balance in my life between brain and body I would have to learn a sport and actually stick with it,and it had to be something that nobody I knew did. This was because I knew I was going to be terrible (at least at first), and because everybody else had a head start on the normal sports. I thought about different martial arts but the idea of being kicked in the face didn't exactly thrill me, and brain damage wasn't high on my list of priorities. Driving through the city one day I saw a sign that said ROCHESTER FENCING CENTRE (RFC). Fencing! Of course! Nobody knew anything about fencing! I begged my parents for months. The were dubious. After all I'd quit every other sport pretty much right after they'd bought me my equipment. Also I don't think my Mom was to thrilled with the idea of me fighting in any sense of the word. She'd grown up in the 60's outside of San Francisco and was so nonviolent she didn't like me even having water pistols (She had "accidental" ran over my .44 magnum squirt gun.) And lastly, did they really want their son learning to fight with swords from someone who couldn't spell "center" correctly? (Turns out centre is the French spelling, but I never saw a french person at RFC so go figure.) Eventually they relented and for my thirteenth birthday present I was allowed to try fencing. I think they figured they had gotten off easy and this would be another thing I'd walk away from in a few months. Little did they know that it was the beginning of a huge investment in time and thousands upon thousands of dollars.
My first few months at the club I practiced two nights a week for about an hour a practice and got basic instruction from one of the more experienced saber fencers. When school let out at the beginning of summer I was invited to start regular practice at the club, which in the summer was two practices a day at two hours each, 4 days a week. These included weight lifting, footwork, drilling, bouting and lessons. It was a complete 180 from my sedentary lifestyle, but I was enjoying myself and could now run a mile without throwing up! The RFC was above a auto parts store and had/has? no air conditioning in a city with mid-80 temps and very high humidity in the summer. (I love seeing movies with fencing clubs in them and the walls are all beautiful wood paneling and it basically looks like an old library without the books. Real fencing clubs are never like this. They usually smell, often have poor ventilation, rarely have windows, and almost never have air conditioning. Except my current club, so in your face everybody else!) So yeah, I got over my not liking to sweat issue.
I started taking lessons from the head coach that summer and frankly he scared the crap out of me. He still does and I'm now a grown man with six inches on him and some training in Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu . Don't get me wrong, he's one of the best coaches in the U.S. and has generated fantastic results from his students. Also in his defense I've heard he's mellowed out just a little tiny bit. But at the time it was not uncommon to hear obscenities being screamed at little girls, masks being sent flying through the air into unsuspecting walls, and student's going to the locker room after a lesson to have a good cry (You did NOT cry during your lesson, it only made him mad.) This was also back in the day when you did not wear a jacket during your lesson. This was not for comforts sake. It was so if you didn't parry fast enough you would end up with a nice red welt as a reminder to parry faster next time. Or to keep your elbow in. Or to recover from your lunge faster. Or to keep you back hand from covering target. Or to keep your front knee straight ahead. B.F. Skinner would have loved to observe one of these lessons, they were a perfect demonstration of negative reinforcement. I'm not an advocate of this coaching style. It doesn't fit my personality or my beliefs, but he always got results and I never saw him make a student do something that they weren't capable of doing. In fact, you usually did things in your lesson that you didn't believe you were capable of at first because the extra motivation of pain avoidance pushed you that much further. That pretty much sums up being his student. He pushes you farther than you think you can go, then he pushes some more.
My first lesson with him is a blur. I remember standing at attention a lot, addressing him as sir (Later he asked my Mom if I'd been to military school), and getting smacked in my elbow because I had bad technique with my three parry. After the lesson was over I had a few marks but nothing serious and was pretty proud that I hadn't lost control of my bowels. On my second lesson I realized two things, one was that I was now definitely his student, and two was that he'd gone easy on me in my first lesson.
At the end of summer I was asked to join the elite team at RFC which meant I would practice every weekday and receive at least two lessons per week. I accepted and my whole life and the life of my family started to revolve around fencing. Grades were kept up not to maintain a good GPA but because if they dropped I wouldn't be allowed to fence. Christmas and birthday presents started taking on the form of fencing equipment. My parents left work early or stayed late to get me to and from practice everyday. And almost all of my friends were fencers. When you train with people day in and day out and sweat and bleed and win and lose and sometimes cry on their shoulder you find out what friendship really is. I'm not in contact with anybody I went to high school with unless they were a fencer with me at RFC.
In February of my 8th grade year I went to my first national tournament, Junior Olympics (JO's) in Colorado Springs. I fenced the U-15, U-17, and U-20. I don't remember my final places but I did pretty well for not having fenced even a full year yet (I think I made the 16 in U-15, the 32 in U-17, and got first rounded in U-20.). After this competition I was completely hooked. I was thirteen years old and missing school to stay in a hotel halfway across the country with my friends and compete in a sport that I loved with kids from all across the country. Is there anything better?
I trained harder and started to go to North American Cups (NACs). We got a new coach at RFC for sabre who was a former Junior National Champion in the Ukraine. A year later he went to college and we Got a former Junior Champion from Poland as our coach. A year later he went off to school along with most of the sabre fencers at RFC leaving me and my one remaining teammate. Our new coach was a fantastic fencer. He'd already competed for the U.S. in four Olympics and would go on to compete in his fifth while he was our coach. Unfortunately he didn't fence saber, he fenced foil and epee. I was doubtful as to the success of this arrangement. My first meeting with this coach didn't help much. At Jo's in Little Rock I was bent over looking through my fencing bag when somebody comes up from behind me and kicks me in the ass sending me headfirst into my equipment. I assumed it was one of my friends so I jumped up and spun around ready to smack him in the face, but instead of my friend there is this goofy looking guy standing there with a grin on his face. I of course immediately ingratiate myself by saying "Who the fuck are you and why did you kick me?" The grin remained and he said, "I'm your new coach, get used to getting your butt kicked." and with that he walked away. A few months later he showed up in Rochester and we started a whole new kind of training.
I'm going to refer to this coach as Grin. For those in the fencing world it won't take much effort to find out who Grin is, but I don't want to be held liable so his name here is Grin. Grin is a freaking excellent coach and the emotional opposite of my first coach, lets call him Yell. If Grin taught me anything it was that fencing, and life in general, is a game and meant to be played. If you can't have fun, what's the point? Not to say that he didn't make us work our butts off in practice, but where Yell would yell at you to work harder or smack you with a weapon, Grin would motivate you by making you want to beat him so damn bad you had to choke back tears of frustration when he'd crush you in a game. There are few things more aggravating than being beaten by a impish man with a grin who because he's beaten you makes you refer to him as "King". And all the while he made it fun. Grin wasn't great at teaching saber technique, but damn my footwork got really good through his coaching. Almost all the footwork drills I do with my student's now are the same as the ones Grin did with me. They focus not only on the technique of footwork, but also on maintaining a flexible mind and the tactics of distance and timing.
After two years of working with Grin and fencing the same teammate every single day for two hours I graduated high school and was recruited by Penn State (WE ARE, PENN STATE!). When I joined the PSU team as a freshman they were three time NCAA Div 1 consecutive champions and had already won five NCAA Championships that decade. The problem was that many of their top fencers had graduated the year before and my class was a rebuilding year. Not many people really expected much from us except our teammates and our coaches. Right from the get go it was made clear to us by our teammates that if you were a good fencer your primary responsibility was to the team. You did not miss practice. You did not skip lessons. And you definitely showed up to every fencing party. One of the great things about the team was it didn't matter so much how long you'd been on the team. What mattered most was how good a fencer you were and how committed to improving you were. There were people on the team that weren't very good and didn't really try and it didn't matter if you were a freshman and they were a senior, you could ignore their bs. The funny thing was it was these people who were always telling the freshmen to carry their bag or chug their beer! WTF! Practice at Penn State was tough but not as tough as RFC. I went there thinking how I was going to be getting crushed at practice and dieing during physical conditioning but really it wasn't bad. The reason being it was me, one other freshman, and two sophomores for saber. That's it. The other freshman was a really solid fencer from Atlanta who became one of my best friends and constant practice partner, I will refer to him from now on as DB (He knows why). In fact, usually it was just him and I for saber at practice (Except for the time it was only me because he was hung over from playing street fighter for shots.). Out of the other saber fencers, one was kind of a pot head who ended up quitting the team because he was called up for a drug test and would have failed. And the other had been switched to saber from foil, but had to redshirt that year. So that left me and DB. Surprisingly, at the end of the year we managed to qualify a full team for NCAA championships. NCAA fencing is different from fencing at NAC's. It's team based rather than individual. You have three fencers and an alternate per weapon. Those people will fence members of another team scoring 1 point for their team for every bout they win. At the end of the meet the team with the highest points wins. At NCAA champs it's like this but every bout you win counts as one point for your team and everybody fences in a huge round robin over the course of two days. At the end of the competition the team with the highest number of points wins. Not only this but men's and women's results are combined so there is no Men's NCAA Team Champion and Women's NCAA Team Champion, just The NCAA Team Champion (school) and individual champions who were the leaders in points in their respective weapon and who won two direct elimination bouts starting from the top four. Anyway, miracle of miracles we qualified a full team and went to Notre Dame for NCAA Championships.
The great part is that Notre Dame were our chief rivals and we'd defeated them the last three years to win NCAA Championships. Now we were on their turf and they had a strong veteran team. Pretty much everybody thought they'd pull out the victory and Penn State's streak would end. Everybody but the fencers and coaches of Penn State. You know the saying "going into the lion's den" well that's what we were doing. The thing was though, we were the lions. We were lions going into the den of Fighting Irishmen. Granted they were Fighting Irishmen, but nobody wants a lion in their den. They have a tendency to eat people or at the least bite off limbs. So long story short we won 149-147 and I finished in 6th earning 2nd Team All-American Honors. Never before or since have I ever experienced so sweet a victory.
End of Part 1
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