The SBCC Sports Pavilion took a break from squeaking basketball sneakers on Sunday and tried something new. Well, new for the Sports Pavilion at least.
Fencing has been around since the twelfth century, but it made its first major-tournament appearance in town over the weekend as the Southern California Junior Olympic Qualifying Tournament hit the hardwood, with plenty of young locals competing.
“It’s just fun to be able to do an action and do it perfectly and get the points,” said Mary-Alice Wintz, a Santa Barbara native who now attends and fences for SBCC.
Wintz had just finished a 5-1 victory in a foil match. The foil is one of three formats to the sport — epee and sabre are the others — and consists of a lighter weapon in which the target area to score a point is restricted to the torso. To score, the fencer must make the initial offensive maneuver.
This is referred to as the “right of way” rule.
“I like the right of way and having to be attacking to get the point, whereas in epee it’s just whoever hits first,” said Wintz.
Local Timothy “T.J.” Jan, who attends Providence Hall High School, competes in the epee, in which the whole body is fair game for a score and both competitors can score at once (called a “double-hit”).
Jan’s father Mitch, a Santa Barbara Police Officer, said being a parent of a fencer is much like parenting any athlete.
“It’s like any other athletic event for a parent in that there’s stress because you want to see them do well and deal with the emotions,” he said. “But what’s tough is that it’s an individual sport, so it’s not like a team can be credited with a loss. It’s all on them.”
At the time, T.J. was trying to shrug off a tough loss.
While the Jan family is mild-mannered and level-headed when it comes to the sport, there were also a fair share of, shall we say, “up-tight” parents and coaches in the gym. An argument between a coach and a referee erupted in the middle of one match, and another parent agreed emphatically when a young fencer lost a point and made a self-critical comment.
It’s everywhere in youth sports.
But for the most part, fencing is an activity that involves traditional etiquette and sportsmanship. According to the elder Jan, T.J. will likely continue to pursue the sport after high school.
The third format of competitive fencing is the sabre, a faster competition in which the entire upper body is prone to point-scoring and the edge of the weapon. Local youths Travis Tibbits and Andy Granatelli III were competing against one another right next to Jan’s epee match.
Aside from the clinks and clanks of the sport, the gym was filled with loud beeps on Sunday. The scoring system is electrical, and is tallied by censors on the tips of the weapons, which are ultimately hooked to the scoreboard through a cable attached to the back of the competitor.
For those interested, the local fencing scene is dominated by two clubs — Presidio Fencing Club (nice name) and the other being the Santa Barbara Fencing Academy. There is also a fencing club at UCSB.
(photos by Blake Dorfman/PresidioPics)
