New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell once commented that achieving greatness requires at least 10,000 hours of practice. Take your pick of sports — it doesn’t matter. All athletes go into training camps to improve their skills, sharpen their fundamentals, and challenge themselves against the best.
But finding that practice can be hard. You need good teachers that can give you the proper guidance, and good training partners that can match your level of skill. Simply practicing on your driveway against a cardboard standup won’t make you a better swordsman.
Luckily for fencers here at Western and across Ontario, Carol Christie, head of the Western fencing team, agrees.
This past weekend, the Mustang Sword Club in association with the Ontario Fencing Association held a three-day competitive fencing training camp in the main gym of the University Community Centre. The camp offered world class coaching and competition to challenge fencers of any calibre.
“We have had a great turnout,” Christie says, noting each session averages anywhere from 30 to 80 fencers.
“It’s really a thrill. We invite fencers from all over Ontario to come down, and we offer this really unique training experience to them that you can’t find anywhere else.”
Students face each other in one-on-one duels in segmented areas throughout the gym. Coaches hover nearby keeping score and offering advice in between rounds. A sudden movement and it’s all over, the buzzer showing a hit for one or both fighters. A slight pause, a second of readjustment — and it begins again.
In the far corner, Kyle Foster keeps a close eye on a pair of students, doling out advice and criticism in equal measure. A former fencing coach and competitor for Western, Foster is now the president of the Canadian Fencing Academy and vice-president of the Ontario Fencing Association.
“I do whatever I can to promote fencing at Western. I’m here to make sure the Western team has a great showing, both in the sectionals and finals,” he says.
Despite not coaching the Western team for some years now, he is still a presence at their tournaments, offering his advice and experience to the team.
“He has been instrumental to helping me run this camp,” Christie said.
There’s not one sword in fencing, but three — the foil, the epee and the sabre — each with its own rules, focus and style. As he describes it, fencing is as much a game of mental acuity as it is physical prowess.
“It’s like chess that way. You always have to be thinking three moves ahead of your opponent to win,” he said.
Foster is far from the only coaching luminary present at the camp. There’s also Alice Lu, who apart from being the head fencing coach at Ryerson University, also represented China as part of its national fencing team.
“I love to give students my experience in fencing,” she said. “It’s different from other sports, because it’s so fast, but you cannot make any plan before you do it. It has to be all instinct. That’s what I try to help with, making it so [fencing] becomes like [breathing].”
Across the room is perhaps the brightest light in the coaching staff for this camp. Alex Frapsauce; a Canadian fencing master, fresh from four years of training at a prestigious academy in France.
As he spars and works with another student, I come to understand even more what Lu was telling me. His moves are natural, unforced, instinctual. Like breathing.
“I have fenced from the time I was seven years old. It has been with me my whole life. It’s who I am,” he tells me.
Under the mask, he’s not what you’d imagine a French trained sword master to be like. Less D’artagnan, and more average university student. Only his French accent speaks to his background.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” he tells me of his experience over the weekend. “But it’s also been hard work for [the students]. We did push them physically, and skill-wise too.”
In talking to these fencers, one thing becomes clear. For the dedicated, fencing is a lifelong sport. As Lu explains, that may be it’s greatest appeal.
“Fencing is beautiful because it doesn’t matter what age [you are]. It’s not all physical, and not all mental. It’s a combination, so anyone of any age can come in and apply their strengths to the sport and make it work for them.”
From the teenaged students to the experienced coaches to the former competitors watching from the sidelines, it is a love of fencing that has gathered them all here. And if Christie has her way, it will be love of fencing that brings them all back each year for this one of a kind training experience.