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Happy March, Members!
Though February is the shortest month of the year, it was very busy for the fencing community, highlighted by dominant performances for our foil national teams in Turin and Cairo, a bronze medal in Tashkent for Elizabeth Tartakovsky, a bronze for our Senior Men's Saber team in Warsaw, more dominance from Junior Women's Epee in France (not to mention strong showings for all our Junior squads in the month) and — of course — the Junior Olympics right here in Colorado. All that plus plenty more on and off of the piste.
First, good luck to everyone headed to Fort Worth for the March NAC and Parafencing National Championships. We're seeing a wonderful turnout for this event, setting records for NAC participation. They say everything is bigger in Texas, and apparently that includes NACs. It’s really great to see the growth of the sport. Indeed, in some areas of the nation, clubs have waiting lists. That means we need to find ways for more clubs to exist!
In March, we lead into the NCAA Championships, happening March 23–26 at Duke University in Durham, N.C. I’ll be there supporting our collegiate athletes as well as welcoming potential Athletic Directors of possible new programs for fencing.–It seems to be appropriate to welcome Wheaton College to the family of colleges with varsity fencing. Wheaton is a high-ranked liberal arts college in Massachusetts which competes in the NEWMAC Conference alongside fellow fencing schools MIT and Wellesley College. We hope this might progress to a NEWMAC Championship.
It’s important, too, to thank Zach Moss (Northwestern), Juan Ignacio Calderon (UCSD), the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation and the Western Fencing Coalition who all had a hand in Wheaton joining fencing. We’ll be progressing our college activity in partnership with Pictor Group, through a grant from the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. And speaking of collegiate fencing, there’s also been great action at the ACC, Ivy League, CCFC and NEIFC Championships as the regular season of the NCAA ends. A special shoutout to the Harvard’s men’s team, which set a record for most wins in program history under coach Daria Schneider.
We’re still planning for our initial celebratory U.S. Fencing Foundation Gala in New York City on May 4 at the Yale Club — the Fencing Foundation Fete! We just passed over 50% sold out for the evening, and there are some exceptional surprises in store for everyone attending. We very much appreciate the support of those who have sponsored tables and bought tickets already, including many of our New York City-area clubs. The list of attendees so far includes nine Olympians and Paralympians! I’d encourage those who haven’t got involved yet to do so. You can get involved by simply hitting reply or by heading to the event page. A fun fact, by the way, that I should have known but did not: Gen. Patton is in fact an Olympian in the sport of Fencing, and there will be a special celebration of that within the Gala.
Developments are afoot in our National Office. After the departure of Cat Bouwkamp PLY, we’ve been without a lead on our parafencing program. I am very pleased to say that, for the first time, we will have a fully focused Parafencing Manager in Beth Mahr, who is currently our Regional Events Manager. Beth will be doing double duty through May 15 and then will be fully concentrating on building our Para pathway to the Los Angeles 2028 Games as well as supporting our current parafencing group to the Paris 2024 Games.
Beth is well-equipped to be successful, having overseen adaptive sport at USA Hockey before joining USA Fencing. I, for one, am excited to see the growth of parafencing under her leadership. Speaking of our para program, they celebrate their National Championships in March at the Fort Worth NAC before heading to Pisa, Italy, for an IWAS World Cup event as they continue their journey toward Paris 2024. In related Sport Performance news, a shoutout to Kaitlyn Litten, who will be taking over managing the World University Games, Pan American Games and our Veteran’s Program.
Speaking of international events, we are delighted that we are able to host the 2023 Vet Worlds later this year! Qualification for this tournament will end at the Summer Nationals in Phoenix. I encourage Vets to attend our Vet Reception and Town Hall in St. Louis with myself and the Veteran’s Committee — details to follow, but make plans now!
We’re also excited at the prospect of hosting FIE events in the 2023-2024 season in the Senior and Junior levels, too!
I know everyone is excited to find out about next season’s schedule, and we are nearly there! One or two contract issues need to be hammered out before we can announce the schedule in full, and we are already working on events as far away as 2025. I can tell you that next season, we’ll have national tournaments in Region 1, 2, 4, 5 and 6. Though there is one obvious missing region, I believe the lineup will offer a nice spread of events across the country in areas reasonably easy to access by airlift. Region 3 remains challenging due to the factors I’ve discussed in this forum a number of times: availability and cost. That said, we are talking about an early 2025 event with a major Region 3 city, though it is early days.
Speaking of events, our Events Review Group has begun work. This group is looking at the complete structure of our events start to finish — from local to national and everything in between. The group represents a great cross-section of membership, including coaches, club owners, parents, fencers, tournament committee members and outside experts. There are some obvious outcomes which are easy to arrive at: for example, the return of Division II and Division III events and similar events. We certainly welcome any feedback that you might have. Hit reply if you have something to offer. We have a similar review group looking at membership structure for USA Fencing and again welcome your feedback.
February saw the results of our USOPC audit come through, which provided a comparable outcome to other NGBs who have been through the experience and provides some opportunities to improve our policies across USA Fencing, many of which were either completed at the recent Feb. 16 board meeting, or its follow-up board meeting on March 9. You can view the final audit report here.
One item that you will have already seen out of that Board meeting is the recommendation of changes to the bylaws. Those are available for comment at this link, and I encourage members to read those and comment early because of the vast number of changes. If you need more explanation or have questions, by all means simply hit reply.
One of the major items in that process is the new Grievance and Discipline Committee, which serves to simplify how we approach the disciplinary process in USA Fencing. While the board will remain the appeal body for discipline, primary discipline repsonsiblity will pass to this Committee. On March 9, the board will approve its membership, which is proposed to be a mix of legal professionals from within our community and independent individuals from outside of the sport of fencing with experience in this sort of ethics and discipline. We hope this approach will increase membership trust in the process.
In closing out, we’ll return to where we started with those dominant foil performances, highlighted by three straight golds for Men’s Foil in World Cup and Grand Prix action (shoutouts to Alexander Massialas OLY and Gerek Meinhardt OLY), a fantastic medal streak season for the one and only Lee Kiefer OLY, and great team results, including (of course) trips to the medal stand.
Finally, as always, feel free to reach out if I or the USA Fencing and Parafencing team can do anything for you!
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