High School: Fencing Class

Physical education and I were not friends by any means. It was not that I didn't like to get physical...and I enjoyed games. It was really just, I think, the awkwardness of that time of life.  Well, that and the boys in the class who constantly tormented me. I grew to hate all of the traditional sports … football, baseball and soccer, and I grew to despise the entire physical education program.

One day I was putting together my schedule for my junior year, when I noticed a class called "fencing", which means sword fighting. That sounded interesting … it certainly couldn’t be worse than my physical education class. I signed up for it immediately.

I loved that fencing class from the very first day. It was taught by a very nice man named Mr. Golding. This man really liked to fence, and he loved to teach. He and I took a liking to each other immediately, which certainly made it easy to attend his class.

My friend Dan also attended fencing class with me, which made it much more fun. Dan and I spent the next year (my senior year) fencing together. We both became very good at this unusual sport, although we never took the time to become great.

There are three major types of fencing: foil, epee and saber. In foil and epee you can only hit your opponent with the point of the sword. In foil you can only hit the chest area, and in epee you can hit the entire body. In saber fencing, on the other hand, you can only hit the chest area, and the only valid hits are with the edge of the blade.

Mr. Golding primarily taught foil fencing. This was because each type of fencing required a different set of equipment. A foil is a long, skinny sword with a button at the top to prevent serious injury. An epee is similar except that the guard (the thing protecting the hand) is much larger. A saber is a stronger blade, since it has to accept more stress.

The class had about thirty foils, two sabers and one epee. Naturally, almost everyone focused on foil fencing, which is also the easiest of the three to learn. Dan and I spent some time learning how to use a saber, although we never really became very good at it. Saber fencing is much more difficult and demanding than either foil or epee.

Each class began with ten minutes of warm up exercises, followed by forty minutes of fencing. Since the class was purposely scheduled as the last class of the day, we didn’t need to shower … it was assumed that we could shower after we got home. This was important as the fencing class was not taught as part of the physical education department. Because of this, we were not allowed to use the locker rooms and showers. In fact, the coaches considered the fencing class as inferior to their programs, and they made no efforts to hide their disdain for this sport.

I spent over a year in that class, learning how to use the foil. It was the first time that I enjoyed a sport as a teenager. It was the first time that physical education teacher (Mr. Golding) treated me well, and it was the first time that I did very good in any sport. I had a lot of fun, and I learned quite a bit about an interesting activity.