Swinging from Chandeliers

One of my first goals coming out of high school was to fence for an NCAA fencing program. Several of my club mates had gone on to NCAA careers at Columbia, Yale, and Penn State. I did not want to go too far north for college, so that left only a couple of NCAA programs left.

Carolina (UNC) and Duke both had NCAA fencing programs, and both are ranked as very good schools so those became my targets. I ended up choosing to go to UNC and fenced on the NCAA team there, eventually making it to the NCAA championships my senior year.

The next goal was to fence at an international "World Cup" event. The opportunity came once I had placed high enough to earn Division I points for placing in the top-32 of one of the top US fencing tournaments. Being on the national points list gave fencers the opportunity to compete internationally. (Fencers still pay their own way for the travel and hotel, unless they are in the top-3, so I paid my own way.)

I had to use a couple of weeks of vacation time at work, so I entered a world cup event in Spain, spent one weekend fencing and then spent the next week and a half traveling to Barcelona and Madrid. The fencing experience was great, though I fared poorly and got knocked out early, but I had achieved my goal of fencing in a World Cup event.

This was one of those kid dreams from my childhood. You know the ones: you're taking some swings at the park with the announcer in your head "two-out, bases loaded, here's the pitch..." and then you win the game?

After taking 8 years off from the sport to attend to my "real life" - family, kids, career - I came back as a recreational level fencer. In USA Fencing there are age group divisions starting with age 40 where you get to compete against fencers in your age group who have similar training schedules as you do. The kids competing for the national teams train daily, but us old timers don't have that luxury.

In my first year as a "Veteran" fencer, I fared okay on my first outing back at a national tournament so I made my goal to actually win a national championship. I peaked at the right time, fenced a good tournament, and got the right match-ups going through the elimination rounds to get me into the gold medal match.

Once there, it was all about keeping focus on the match at hand - not just being happy to get there. The bout was close, but I ended up winning and earning my first national championship!

Running a web site on my favorite sport, I earned a distinction that I hadn't even thought of: I got to go to the Beijing Olympic Games!

My site, Fencing.Net, had already been named by Yahoo! Internet Life as the top fencing web site for the Sydney Olympics and the site saw a lot of traffic and media mentions following the Athens Olympics. When I found out about the media credentialing process for the Olympics, I applied to get a media credential to cover the Olympic fencing events in Beijing and got it!

Being able to cover the Olympic Games was a great experience. I was able to see the athletes up close and interview them on their biggest competitive stage. I'm up for a credential again for London in 2012 and looking forward to the experience.

There could be other competitive goals for the rest of my fencing career. Fencing is a sport that you can play from when you are 8 to past 70. There are Veteran World Championships in the 50-59, 60-59, and 70+ age groups. If my elbow and knees hold out that long, maybe I'll try for making the world team at 50.

For now, I'm using fencing as motivation to keep myself healthy. It gets me moving, keeps my fit, and motivates me to do other exercises.