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Welcome to the Holiday Season, Members!
As we write, the Pan American Games are going on in Santiago, Chile. The tournament is one of the two major multisport events where USA Fencing athletes compete alongside athletes from across the sports of the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee. We’ve seen great success in the tournament so far, and I encourage you to visit our Pan Am Games page to see just how well our talented athletes have done.
Somehow, it’s already November. So great to see many of you in Orlando late last month, and I look forward to meeting more of you in Fort Worth early this month as the national tournament season gets well and truly underway. It was great to see our community back together on the strip again, and the spirit of fencing was alive and well in Orlando. A particular shoutout to the super brave performance of Robert Wang (Tim Morehouse Fencing Club), who won the Cadet Men's Saber gold despite cramping up during the final. While of course we hope to see Robert cramping less next time, it was a clinic in mental determination from the Team USA cadet fencer!
A word of thanks to those who are supporting our new range of partners at USA Fencing like Avenues, Naked Wines, CollegeVine and others. Your support means that we can show the success to more brands and hopefully involve them in fencing. Many of these partnerships have happened because of connections in the fencing community so thank you again! Meanwhile, a big shoutout to our College Coaches and USA Fencing's own Michael Aiken for putting together a college fair attended by hundreds of high school juniors and seniors in Orlando.
While our national tournaments are undoubtedly exciting they aren’t the first events of the season delivered here in the USA. The Regional Series (powered by Avenues — The World School) has been underway for several weeks, and we’re still looking back fondly on the U.S.-hosted FIE Veteran World Championships earlier this month where we saw a dominant performance by our Vets.
The Vet Worlds experience was perhaps highlighted by Julie Seal's double-weapon World Championship (foil and saber), and the Vets once again winning the medal count with a significant lead over our friends from Italy. Our world champions, in no particular order, were Julie Seal, Jennette Starks-Faulkner, Mark Lundborg, Joseph Streb, Lydia Fabry, Jane Eyre, Jon Normile, Liz Kocab and Tom Lutton. Team USA also heard the anthem played for the team events in Men's Saber, Women's Saber and Men's Epee. The tournament itself was well reviewed worldwide, even so far as to be seen in the European press! A big thank you to USA Fencing's Glen Hollingsworth, Jennifer Yamin, Selina Kaing, Michael Aiken, Shannon Daughtery, Rita Comes, Tabitha Chamberlin, Kaitlyn Litten, Bryan Wendell, Nicole Kirk and their respective teams as well as all of the volunteers, sports medicine, armorers, referees that made Daytona Beach 2023 one to remember for Vets here and abroad.
In other international news, our parafencing team visited Terni, Italy, for the IWAS World Championship — a big step on the road to the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games. While Team USA came home without heavy hardware around their necks, Ellen Geddes PLY and Byron Branch took important steps towards qualification with an athlete or two still in contention to add themselves into a qualifying position for Paris. The team will next visit Thailand before a critical January World Cup in Cardiff, Great Britain.
For those who have been asking about returning NACs to Region 3, you will have seen we've listened and will bring our October 2024 NAC to Atlantic City, N.J. We announced this location immediately following the October 2023 NAC — introducing a new way to announce our NACs in an attempt to give athletes, coaches, families and event directors time to plan ahead.
From now on, to the extent we've got the NAC confirmed, we'll be announcing the location following the current season’s event. Internally, this has taken significant work on the part of my colleague Glen Hollingsworth, whom I want to take a moment to recognize and thank for his efforts in doing so. Over the last year, we've explained a number of times the challenges associated with NAC locations. First, there’s the challenge of our wide membership base, with its highest concentrations in the northeast, particularly around New York City, plus California.
Because of the size of NACs, we need around 220,000 square feet of flat space — leaving approximately 38 venues in the USA that can host a NAC. That number is further reduced when you remove ones where we have no chance to be able to secure — like Javits Center in New York City — and factor that corporate conventions will take precedence because they simply generate significantly more revenue. With all those factors, you can see that the puzzle is not as easy to solve as it first might appear.
Speaking of New York City, we'll be returning to the Big Apple for the U.S. Fencing Foundation Fete again this year. Last year, we sold out the Yale Club, and this year we'll be celebrating the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games team and those who closely supported them. We’d love to have your support for the Gala and for the Foundation this May 9, and more details will be coming soon.
Away from the strip, we've been busy working on a number of initiatives related to growing our collegiate community, which has significant challenges and is mostly driven by enrollment opportunities. This month, we’ll begin to engage with high schools to try to grow the states and areas that have sanctioned high school fencing (shout out to New Jersey, of course, for already doing great things in this space!), while we're working also on our marketing and media drive toward the Olympic and Paralympic Games. While the Olympic & Paralympic Games are not the sole element that we want to promote, the Games provide a unique opportunity to grow the audience of the sport and attract media interest. To that end, we've begun to work with the folks who grew some of the largest sport brands to help attract more coverage to USA Fencing in the coming few weeks.
USA Fencing also won the USOPC Diversity and Inclusion award for our GRACE program, for which applications are open for this coming season! Most impressively perhaps we won in the "Large" NGB Category, which reflects the recent growth of USA Fencing. A huge congratulations to Dr. Shannon Jolly and everyone who worked on this, and to those who have furthered their fencing career through the provision of GRACE funding.
A word on coaching education: Coaches can now acquire their coaching membership in full by testing out of certain modules or by going through our existing offerings of online coaching training, these remain available for members to use to further their learning, and a word to our friends at USFCA who also have some great resources.
One of those courses which remains mandatory is “Creating a Culture of Belonging.” This course also meets the biannual Supplemental Athlete Safety Training requirement for those working at National events.. With that said, it draws into focus the need for us to pay attention to the way we treat each other. In a world which seems increasingly adversarial in the wider world, fencing needs to be a refuge from anger, a true community. There are times when we don't see that, and the way we treat each other is at best downright disrespectful. I'd ask our community to just reflect on the way we interact with each other, especially at the end of an emotional bout, and take a moment before addressing a situation.
Finally, have a great November and see you in Fort Worth!
Phil
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