Happy September, Members!


Welcome to fall! While the competitive season is well underway at the local and regional level, I’m looking forward to seeing many of you, many for the first time, at the October NAC in Minneapolis in just over a month. Please do come and introduce yourself and have a conversation. In a membership organization, it is vitally important we listen to the members — 40,000 brains are better than one — so please do come up and let us know what ideas you have to grow our sport, and to ensure the membership experience is one we can be proud of.


September sees big regional events in Arlington, Texas; Orlando, Fla.; and Deerfield, Ill. — amongst the 18 major regional events on the calendar for an exciting season ahead.


A core value of our newly formed staff team here at USA Fencing is transparency, and as one tool to help with that you’ll find this monthly update from me every month on our website and in your inbox. You can also reach out to me directly at p.andrews@usafencing.org or via 303-521-3689 or via Instagram at @a.phil or Twitter at @PhilAndrewsUSA — whatever works for you. Feel free, too, to let me know what you’d like to see in these monthly updates.


We’re also keen to know who is in our membership. Who does the fencing community really have in it, who can help us grow the sport, who can help us improve the sport, who can help us look at what we do a different way? Fencing has a depth of incredibly intelligent individuals within its number, so if you feel you can contribute in some way — creatively or otherwise — reach out!


I started only on Aug. 16, so of course I am still very new and still very much learning. Speaking of which, as we alluded to during the announcement of my hiring, I’ll shortly be hitting the road on a listening tour with some of our clubs around the country.


Sadly, of course I won’t be able to visit with all 700 premium and affiliated clubs, but I hope to speak to as many as possible. That starts this month with a visit to the San Francisco Bay Area over International Fencing Day, while visits to the Los Angeles-San Diego area and the historic New York-New Jersey area are already planned. Additional visits to the Houston, Atlanta, Salt Lake City (together with this December’s NAC), and Columbus areas are also planned, and beyond that I’ll be trying to visit clubs whenever I end up in a city.


I want to take a moment to recognize the outstanding work of Jack Gierhart, who served USA Fencing as Interim CEO for the last eight months. Jack will still be with us through the end of September working on projects associated with Coaching Education, Membership and reviews of our staff team from the last year. Jack, in turn, has played a strong part in hiring in an outstanding team of staff with whom I am an unbelievably impressed. We are hiring for three more positions right now, an officials coordinator, a Development Manager to help support the U.S. Fencing Foundation (more on that later), and a leadership position in our Membership area who will oversee process, service and growth. Check out teamworkonline.com if you think you have what it takes to fill these positions!


Last week, I was able to spend some time with our Parafencing National Team, including Paralympic Games medalist Scott Rodgers PLY (Denver Fencing Center / Highlands Ranch, Colo.), World Cup medalist Ellen Geddes PLY (Shepherd Swords / Aiken, S.C.) and 2020 Paralympian Shelby Jensen PLY (Salt Lake Swords / Salt Lake City, Utah) — amongst others.


Parafencing is an exciting part of our community that has recently seen international success at the IWAS (world governing body for Parafencing) level, and will be heading out in September to Pisa, Italy, to begin their international season. Check out USAFencing.org as well as our social media for coverage and some great interviews from this last week. Our challenge as we look to help Team USA win the 2028 Los Angeles Paralympic Games medal count with some 24 medals available in Parafencing, is very simple — we need to get more parafencers! To do that, we need clubs, coaches and indeed of course unique athletes willing to learn. If you have some interest in bringing Parafencing to your club, make sure to reach out to our very own Paralympian here on staff, Cat Bouwkamp, for how you can help. She's at c.bouwkamp@usafencing.org.


Over the last few years, unfortunately, our sport has come under the microscope for some of the negative issues that our members have suffered at the hands of individuals that we do not need or want to be part of our community. Simply, abuse — physical, emotional or sexual — of any sort is simply not acceptable in our sport. It is still happening, and we will continue to give our best efforts to eliminate the elements of our culture that have allowed abuse in fencing to fester. This can, on occasion, be a painful process, and there is a realization that some of the folks who you may have valued or thought to be of value are in fact not the type of individuals who should be welcome in our community. Similarly, it is vital we engage with our alumni for multiple reasons but recognize that those who might have had a negative experience in fencing can come back to our sport and begin to heal those wounds that might have existed. This is difficult to write, and difficult to hear for the vast majority of fencers who are wonderful, committed individuals, but it is necessary that we own this task at USA Fencing and our need to ensure the culture of our sport is one that simply doesn’t accept this sort of behavior.


To that end, yesterday we added another way to highlight issues of abuse and any other issues to USA Fencing, anonymously, in partnership with RealResponse. Already used by USA Swimming, USA Track and Field and US Equestrian, Real Response has been primarily active in the collegiate community. This gives any member who has a concern about behavior, abuse or any other issues in fencing to be able to report them to us via text message at 320-ENGARDE. It is an added way that people might be more comfortable reporting issues to USA Fencing. Of course, all the existing methods of delivery to USA Fencing and the U.S. Center for SafeSport, U.S. Athlete Ombudsman and other services continue to exist and can be found online at usafencing.org. 


Over the next month, you’ll see the launch of mental health resources for our membership which will further see the Ffencing community have access to mental health professionals and resources that can help deal with the different phases of an individuals’ sporting career.


While most of my first weeks here has been spent getting to know our staff team, many of whom are also new, we have also had some current issues to deal with, the most impactful of which has been insurance. Our insurance rates climbed by over a quarter of a million dollars, although in large part that was associated with a re-growth of the sport to pre-COVID levels. Our rate per individual member grew around 9%, but the overall cost grew greatly. This is not, unfortunately, unusual in the NGB and large-sport association world just now. At USA Fencing we now have a responsibility to you, our members and member clubs, to arrest this issue and bring our insurance rates somewhat under control. We’ll be working on what we can do with our brokers, insurance providers and that may mean additional measures we need to take to ensure our insurance cost is addressed, meanwhile of course this gives us an opportunity to look at how we can ensure we are keeping our community safe.


We’ve seen the idea shared by members regarding the AAU’s Fencing offering. While of course it is up to the individual club what they wish to do with their membership, it’s worth understanding exactly what insurance covers and what it does not. For example, with respect to AAU’s insurance it covers the entire of AAU’s sporting operations, which means that it is not focused on the sport of Fencing (or Parafencing, of course). This means, in part, that its coverage is over all of those sports, and the limits do not apply per incident (where as USA Fencing insurance does), but across the AAU portfolio. Most importantly, the insurance requires each and every occurrence to be a sanctioned activity, which means you need to pay a sanction fee for each and every single time you pick up a weapon, and additional fees are levied for each additional insured on a certificate. It is also important to check for any exclusions that might be provided by AAU’s insurance offering, or any other third-party insurance offering. 


Before I joined, our Director of Development together with our Board and the US Fencing Foundation were already working towards a new vision for fundraising, which can help in addressing access and funding issues for fencers, parafencers and potential fencers across the country. Our Foundation Chair, Robert Zagunis, is particularly passionate about ensuring that no stone is left unturned as we move towards Paris 2024 and Los Angeles 2028 and has challenged us to make sure the Foundation is aware of any barriers that might prevent a fencer from reaching the Olympic or Paralympic Games in 2028.


That’s a powerful statement from Robert, and it's one that we must immediately move towards. Going forward, our fundraising will all be housed in the US Fencing Foundation. We’ll be ramping up our efforts to provide more resources in our community via the Foundation, already we are able to provide further funding to highly ranked national team fencers thanks to these efforts. Look for more news in the coming weeks from Foundation activities, and if you are enthused to get involved, we’d love to hear from you! USA Fencing’s board has also approved a significant investment in this area to further build the foundation over the coming months.


Our 2021-2022 financial year is still in the process of closing, but we hope to provide membership with a financial update in the coming weeks. We did see a significant surplus in 2021-2022. Although the exact figure is not yet available, we hope to make that available shortly.


As we go forward from here, we are already working on exciting and impactful projects including a review of our membership structure and our events structure to highlight our local event level. Meanwhile, Shannon Jolly, our DEIB manager is working on significant projects both in terms of our own community but how we can reach more potential fencers, particularly from communities that are not traditionally associated with our sport.


That’s all for now. But again, we want to hear from you, so reach out at the above contact details and of course as I learn more, and our newly onboarded staff learn more we will hopefully be giving more detail in these monthly updates.


Here’s to a great season!






Phil Andrews

CEO, USA Fencing

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