College fencing growth does not happen by accident. In this episode of First to 15, Bryan Wendell sits down with Brad Suchorski, USA Fencing’s Director of Membership, Service and Growth, to talk about the work happening behind the scenes to expand and sustain college fencing in the United States. They discuss the spring NCAA Championships at Notre Dame, the significance of separate men’s and women’s team titles, why schools add sports in the first place, and how USA Fencing works with colleges and universities to make the case for fencing. Brad also explains how recruiting tools like College Connect, college fairs and Recruiting 101 sessions fit into the bigger picture — and why growing college fencing means supporting both new and existing programs. If you’ve ever wondered how a school actually adds fencing, or what families should understand about the college fencing landscape, this episode is for you.
In this episode, Bryan talks with Brad Suchorski, USA Fencing’s Director of Membership, Service and Growth, about the bigger picture behind collegiate fencing expansion.
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SEASON 2 EPISODE 26
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:01] BW: I've heard a lot of people talk about college fencing as if it just happens, like a school adds a team, there's a championship, there's a recruiting fair that USA Fencing holds each year, and then from the outside, that makes everything look simple. But as you'll learn in this episode, it's not so simple. Behind every new program, every one of those roster spots, every conversation at a college fair, where a student athlete meets their future coach, there's a lot of work and that means meetings with campus leaders, questions about enrollment and sustainability of the program, conversations about women's sports, division three fencing, all that work to make sure fencing is not just growing, but growing in a lasting way.
The NCAA championships at Notre Dame this spring gave us another chance to see college fencing on a big stage, including separate men's and women's titles for the first time. The real story is bigger than this one weekend. Today, our guests and I are going to talk about that bigger story. I'm Bryan Wendell, and in this episode of First to 15, I'm joined by my colleague, Brad Suchorski, who is USA Fencing's Director of Membership, Service and Growth. Brad has worked in the Olympic movement for more than a decade and three years plus with USA Fencing. He's played a major role in revitalizing what this organization has done for collegiate fencing. That means helping schools understand why fencing makes sense, supporting recruiting for existing programs and those new programs that he's helped at, and launching something called College Connect, which is a great way to think about how fencers and coaches can communicate in a really important way.
We're going to talk about, yeah, our trip to Notre Dame for NCAA's. But bigger than that, we're going to talk about all the work that happens behind the scenes, why schools add sports, how USA fencing approaches this challenge of adding fencing to different programs, and then what the momentum tells us about the collegiate landscape and Olympic fencing. Brad, with that out of the way, I want to say, welcome to First to 15.
[0:02:02] BS: Thanks, Bryan. I appreciate the intro and it's great to be here.
[0:02:05] BW: We've had a lot of conversations since we're colleagues. This podcast episode will be a little different, but it's a chance to pull back the curtain on some of the work that you've been doing, and then I've been lucky enough to help amplify through the communications efforts. Really, let's start by talking about the most recent time you and I were together face to face, which was at Notre Dame for NCAA's. That's not the new story by the time this episode is airing, but it still feels like a good place to start. When you think about our trip to South Bend, what stands out for you from that weekend?
[0:02:39] BS: You know what's interesting about that one is the women's championship are crowning that women's team champion in all three weapons. It’s really a culmination of work from the fencing community over time. There were plenty of trailblazers leading up to that particular moment in time. It was a really cool experience to see some of those trailblazers there, have those conversations if they weren't there, talk to them in advance and talk to them about what it meant to them.
When it comes down to sports and opportunity and access, this was a great way to be able to provide access to a championship that historically had been, well, since the early 90s, had been a team champion. You needed both men's and women's programs. We know that there are some women's programs, unfortunately, that are not going to add a men's program in the near future. To give those student athletes an opportunity at a team championship is really impactful. It only adds to the student athlete experience long term.
Being there, it was a fun experience. I think there was a lot of energy, a lot of excitement. Bryan, you and your team did an excellent job of capturing that, the moment, not only on the final strip itself, but the events throughout pool play. If you've never been to NCAA's, or unfamiliar with the format, it's one of those events, you have the highest-level fencing, you have fencers who are competing in senior world championships, junior world championships, who are on national teams, competing in five-touch bouts for two days. It is an exciting experience and highly recommend for those who have never been to try to get out if it's in your area, or to try to watch the live streams moving forward.
They do a great job of being able to watch these events this past year. The final strips were on ESPN Plus, which was really cool to broadcast that, and I believe it's the last few years, if not more. Bryan, I actually, I want to put this question back to you, because you were the one, you and your team were interviewing a lot of these athletes. What were those interviews like?
[0:04:46] BW: Yeah, it was cool to get to sit down with a lot of the athletes, Magda Skarbonkiewicz, Alexandra Lee, Natalia Botello, a bunch of these fencers, women fencers who were able to talk about what it means to be part of history. Because like you said, it's been so long since there was a women's team championship. There's never been a women's team championship in epee that included epee and sabre, I should say. This was really a first. They were able to talk about the legacy and even what this would have meant to them if they were still in high school. Now all of a sudden, it opens up new opportunities for them for maybe they were thinking, “Okay, I would love to go to this school that has a women's only program. But if I do, it's a great program, great coaches. But if I do, I'm not going to be able to compete for a national team championship all there.” Well, now that conversation has completely changed. It's really exciting.
Getting to interview them and we've released snippets of that. We're going to put that together into a bigger package, because this just is such an important moment in history. That was really cool. Then yeah, echoing what you said, just college fencing in general, women's and men's is just such a different level. I mean, I love our NACs and the energy there, but the college fencing landscape, where you have people cheering like crazy for each other in different weapons, different gender. They're going wild for each individual touch, knowing that it's putting them one step closer to winning that tournament, or winning a title.
Like you said, if you've got an NCAA fencing program in your area next season, go to their schedule, find a meet near you and go check it out. Because that's a great way to know if you're in high school, thinking about fencing in college, what the vibe is like. Recruiting tip, then you can share that with the coach and be like, “Hey, I checked out your team actually fencing. I was there in the stands, and here are my takeaways.”
Let's talk about the college landscape, and what are families not quite understanding about how college fencing works? When you have conversations, you talk to a lot of coaches, but also, I'm thinking about the parents. When you're talking to a parent, or a family, what are they not understanding about college fencing that we can maybe help clear up today?
[0:06:58] BS: Yeah. College fencing is one of many sports in the NCAA ecosystem. It's one Olympic sport. It's our main sport. It's our main focus, but it is one of many. For us, obviously, we are entrenched in fencing on a day-to-day basis. We live and breathe it from a national office perspective. We have parents who live and breathe it from taking their kids to the club, or to their high school practice, or what have you there. Then you have the kids who just love to be with their team, love to be on the strip, constantly living and breathing fencing. It's very easy to get in the mindset of, okay, fencing is the most important sport within college programs. That's not necessarily the case with a lot of these college programs.
When talking with parents and trying to explain opportunities to them, we have 46 schools right now where we're looking at adding at least one more by the end of this fencing season, and we're expanding opportunities as fast as we've done as a sport over the last two decades. This will be our fourth school that we've added this fencing season, which has never been done before in fencing, just in general. You take into effect some of the recent lawsuits that the NCAA has had to deal with. That's the house decision. You've got, which is the main factor here, which ultimately, for those who may or may not follow collegiate sports, ultimately led to some of the NIL decisions.
You have these universities that are operating, essentially, a big business at these larger power four schools. At the end of the day, universities are businesses. They’re all business. They're trying to understand which programs can I bring in, to bring in students to help my university, whether that be by bringing in students, whether they need help with enrollment, whether they need help with Title 9, balancing out gender equity at the institution, whether that be within the school itself, or the athletic department, or if they're looking to maybe elevate their prestige of their programs. Fencing does a great job of being able to elevate the prestige, because the schools that have fencing are very highly academic at the end of the day.
When talking to parents about these different opportunities, yes, everyone would love for all the 1,200 schools in the NCAA to have fencing. The reality of that, though, is the athletic departments are evaluating fencing against other emerging sports, other sport opportunities. You see women's flag football is the new hot thing. I mean, rightfully so, women's flag football is a sanctioned high school sport, I believe in roughly 20 states, if not more, at this point. There are a lot of young girls playing that sport. There's an opportunity for athletic departments to say, this is a great way to bring in students, same with women's wrestling, same with triathlons, same with stunt, with acrobatics and tumbling. You name it.
For a lot of us who don't necessarily work in the space, it may be interesting to hear women's wrestling, or acrobatics and tumbling, or women's flag football, because those are not sports that we come across on a day-to-day basis, but they are also growing. Depending on the facilities at those institutions, they might be a better fit for that institution and what they're trying to accomplish. Circling back to your question, Bryan, because you get these questions, too, about, I'm a parent. I want my kid to go to a high academic school and have a really good academic experience, but I also want them to fence. I think it ultimately depends on what that student athlete is looking for in an experience.
We have a lot of variety of schools going from the east coast to the west coast, within the Midwest as well. There's obviously in the south, the southeast, there's some missing. We don't have any schools currently south of North Carolina. That is something that we are aware of and we're working on. We do have a lot of diversity when it comes to the schools, and the different academic programs and what the student athlete is looking for in that experience. There's sometimes a reality check conversation with parents, but also frames their mind and both their mind and our mind on, how can we help get their student athlete into the university of their choosing?
[0:11:19] BW: Yeah. A parent is, like you said, looking at it from such a close perspective, close in perspective. That makes perfect sense and we want to equip them for those conversations and provide them with tools to make that decision for them a little bit easier, because it is such an important decision. But then, zooming back, you and I have talked a lot with Phil, our CEO, about the work that you were doing in collegiate fencing that's happening behind the scenes. These are conversations, hundreds of conversations over months and months and years about talking to people who maybe have not even considered fencing. Now all of a sudden, it's on their radar screen. What are you actually doing to grow college fencing? That seems like an overly simple question, but what is that process? Because ultimately, the more schools offering fencing, the better, right? The more roster slots and the more collegiate fencing homes we can provide for our high school fencers.
[0:12:22] BS: Yeah. It's a lot of work by a lot of people. I appreciate you saying you're doing this, but it's – I mean, Bryan, you're doing this as well. Those doing a lot of work, our CEO, our foundation does a lot of work with developing grant programs for these programs to start, not only for current and existing programs, but also for future programming. It ultimately comes down to, for us, we've put up an organizational emphasis on growing the sport. Look, I'm happy to lead certain aspects of this. It's been a very strong privilege to be able to do it, to be able to start some programs, or work with some athletic departments to start programs, to be able to provide opportunities for our athletes, something very special. It's not something that any of us take lightly here. We know that these opportunities impact lives in a positive manner. That is something that we realize and we recognize and what pushes us to keep going and do more.
For every hundred conversations we have, we probably get about 10 people, 10 universities that want to continue that, right? It is a similar sales role to a lot of other sales jobs. People listening out there, working in sales, you know what that ratio looks like, right? For us, what we really look to do is we – in our selling of the sport, we identify the schools that fit what our fencers and the demographics look like in order to match it up and have these really easy, compatible fits. We look at strategic plans of the University, of the athletic department. We look at these universities that maybe they received a grant for an updated facilities. We have these powerful tools that bring in a lot of relevant and very recent news that could tie to universities, or could trigger universities to add sports.
When we see that we want to be the first person on the phone with them, the first person in their email and say, “Congratulations on your hundred-million-dollar gift to build out your new facility. Have you thought about fencing? Here's why you should be out fencing.” We get on those calls, and sometimes it's a no. Sometimes it's a no where, “We're just supporting our existing facilities. We don't have the bandwidth.” And that's okay. We still cultivate that relationship. Over time, the goal is then to turn that no into a yes, right?
Just like in any sales type role, the only time a no is a no is when they block you and on all sorts of things and they just stop responding, right? But at the end of the day, we want to make sure that these universities, they know what we're doing. We know what they're doing and we can match them together. That's really important.
[0:15:10] BW: You've done that so well. I think that answers one question. It's not random. It's not Brad has a map of all the schools and a dart and is saying, “Okay, which school am I going to target next?” You're doing this through data. I also imagine, you hear from people who say, “You know what? I would love insert major West Coast institution to have fencing.” Or, there's this giant school in Florida. Why don't they have fencing? Call them up, Brad. How do you respond to people who say, this school needs fencing, because that's my alma mater, even if the data shows you it's not the right fit? Because I know you get those types of questions all the time.
[0:15:43] BS: The dartboard approach only works so many times. It really depends on the institution. I'll throw one out there, University of Florida. That's a great example. University of Florida has a great club program, great club team. Shout out to everybody down there who's listening on the University of Florida Gators fencing club team. Very impressive what they've been able to do. They have anywhere between 75 and 100 kids, if not more, that participate in fencing down there. This is not just an ad promo for theirs, but when looking at their club, very, very strong club, the university SEC team, division one, a power four school, opted into the house settlement. Question becomes, how come we don't just transition this club team in diversity, right?
You see that, there's other schools that always bring up that question of, well, we have a great developed club team. They would love to go varsity. How come this doesn't happen at these schools? There are some schools where that works. Denison, for example. Denison, Division three in Ohio, when we are talking to their AD, that was one of their ways to get athletes onto their varsity team to start a competition this upcoming year. They have some great athletes on that team, great men's sabre specifically, and epees and foils. But they have great athletes to be able to push them from the club to the team, starting up at the 26, 27 calendar year to help fill out that roster. Why can Denison do it, but not Florida? That goes to the question, right?
[0:17:12] BW: Sure.
[0:17:12] BS: Why are certain schools doing this and others aren’t? Well, the ones that do not do this are for a number of reasons. One, the first thing is when there are clubs for it, they're generally under the student government. They're generally under student government, funding comes from student government. It's not coming from the athletic department. Not always the case, but in most cases, comes from their student government, or club association, or something equivalent at that university. The athletic department is not paying a cent for it. Now, going back to my original comment, all of these universities are businesses, right?
[0:17:46] BW: Yeah.
[0:17:48] BS: If you're an athletic department and you're seeing there's a hundred kids over here, I'm not paying a cent for this positive student experience. Why would I bring them under my fold and have to then pay for head coach, have to pay for potential scholarships, have to pay for facilities, strength and conditioning? In some cases, it's a six-figure investment to do that, right? Then you look at some of these division one programs that have opted into the house settlement and have NIL and all these other things. They really want to focus in on their revenue generating sports, their footballs, their men's and women's basketball. In some cases, men's and women's lacrosse. In some cases, men's and women's hockey. Those last two sports that I mentioned, very small amount of schools drive revenue out of those sports, same with volleyball. There are some schools that make money off of volleyball. Nebraska, example. But the vast majority, when they look at the revenue generation, it's not associated with those sports. But they do focus a lot of their time and energy on it.
In those cases, Florida doesn't necessarily need to, and I apologize for picking out Florida. I have some family and relatives that live in Gainesville. I love the campus. But you have to make a much more compelling case. A lot of the compelling case comes to, what's that grant funding going to look like in order to start the program? It comes down to dollars and cents. When you look at a Denison example, when we were having those conversations with Matt, their athletic director, we were talking about, what does this look like for the future? Yes, you have a strong club program on the men's side. Peter, their head coach at Denison has done a great job of building that program up, and a lot of work that Peter has done to get to where they need to be.
When we were having those conversations with Matt, we talked about, okay, what's this grant funding going to look like in order to help make you sustainable long-term? They're going to look at elevating, or potentially elevating part-time assistance to full-time assistance. What could that look like? We went through a lot of different scenario plannings with them, and I'm sure their leadership did as well on their own. But to make sure that they were in a situation where they could be sustainable long-term.
For Denison, it was a great way to bring in students that may not normally look at Denison for varsity fencing on the men's side. Very similar to FDU. FDU women's program, I'll be at their division one, but still looking at how can we bring in individuals and student athletes that may otherwise not be looking at our university. It's a way to drive enrollment for their schools. That goes back to the enrollment generation of the institution. We see that as a positive message, both from Denison and FDU. To go back to your original question of how do those conversations start, when we look at Arcadia, which is our third program that we added this year, those conversations date back to a couple of years. They were in the midst of adding a couple of sports at that time. Their roadmap said, they wanted to add sports.
They had recently updated some facilities. They've recently added sports. We were talking with them. A lot of institutions, they only like to add one sport a year, because from a bandwidth perspective, they need to make sure their facilities are all set. They need to make sure their staffing is good to go. Not just head coach of the fencing team, but support staff, right? Your strength and conditioning, your medical staff, make sure they're not overly stretched. If they are, do you need to bring in an extra person? Those types of things, right?
A lot of universities, they only like to add one sport at a time, which was fine. Each university has their own prerogative. But understanding that if they are only going to add one sport at a time, but their strategy is to add sports, you can see what that roadmap is ahead, maybe some other sports, or some other opportunities that they may be thinking of to be on the forefront of that. That's really where we've been very successful in making sure that we are at the front of those conversations.
[0:21:51] BW: It's interesting hearing what happens in those conversations, questions about enrollment and gender equity and providing more opportunities for people to attend those programs, and the difference between offering that at the club level, versus the varsity level, is why you're even doing all this, right? Because the varsity programs, there's so many great club programs that we don't want to discount them. That's not what this episode is about though, right? We're talking more about the NCAA side and the opportunities that exist there at the varsity level.
I wonder, when you're talking to these athletic directors, what are some of the questions that they have? Because you've been having these conversations now for years. What are some of the things that they want to know about fencing? I imagine, some of them maybe have never even seen a fencing bout, or if they have, they've maybe experienced it at the Olympic level on their TV screen. What are the questions that they have about what it would look like to bring fencing to an Arcadia and FDU, at a Denison, to give the three examples that are most recent?
[0:22:52] BS: You know, Bryan, what's funny is in the first couple of conversations you have with athletic director, senior women's administrators, deputy ADs, presidents, you talk very little fencing.
[0:23:02] BW: Mm. Okay.
[0:23:04] BS: They're looking at, how many kids we can bring in. They're looking at, what facilities we're going to use. What is the potential storage going to look like? What is the training schedule, the strength and conditioning use? What does the schedule look like? Competition schedule. They look at all of those things, prior to even knowing about the equipment itself, or the competition, the specific formats, or anything like that.
[0:23:29] BW: They have to. Yeah.
[0:23:31] BS: They're looking at the dollars and cents from a university standpoint. They're looking at this from a, how do we bring in kids, bring in student athletes and give them a good experience? Because the last thing you want to do is start a program. You hear these horror stories of people starting programs, not in fencing per se, but starting programs, being under resourced, not being able to recruit. Then the program shuts down a couple of years later, because it was just a bad experience overall, not just for the student athletes, but for the administration.
We want to make sure that we give them all the information possible. Because we don't want any surprises to come up. We talk to them about when it comes to facilities, yes, you can do it on a basketball court. You can do practices on a basketball court with the [inaudible 0:24:13]. That is an option. There are universities to do that. Is it the Rolls Royce of facilities? Probably, not. But is it something that you can start up with? Yes, absolutely.
You also need to talk about what a storage look like. Storage at a lot of these institutions is already pretty limited. How are they going to incorporate some of these strips into their storage if they have a limited capacity? What does the armory look like? In some cases, you have the armory is connected with the head coach's office. In other cases, it's a separate room. In most cases, it's a separate room. But you obviously need the space for both the head coach's office and the armory, plus storage. Well, then you're starting to add up a little bit more in the facilities, right? Making sure that from the facility standpoint, you can cover this, provide a good experience, not just for fencing, but for your existing programs as well. What the athletic directors are then balancing is if we add a program here, what is it potentially taking away from of my existing programs? Is it taking away potentially the facility of use when it comes to practice space?
It's a winter sport. If you do it on a basketball court, say, you have one or two main gyms and you have your basketball team going, volleyball goes a little bit into the winter, but it's fall sport. If you have a wrestling program that does mats onto the gym, if that's what they do, well, then you need a balance with the wrestling program, the basketball program, both of them, men's and women's. Just like that, you're starting to see how this is a very much so a push and pull within the university of adding programs, versus supporting existing.
[0:25:55] BW: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. It's something that they could think, hey, fencing would be the perfect sport for us in a lot of ways, but we just don't have physical space right now, right? I'm sure you've heard that at time or two. In that case, when you do get that soft no, or that not right now, take us through your mindset. Are you thinking, okay, well, note to self, I'm going to reach out again next season? Is it as formulaic, I guess, for lack of a better word as that as like, okay, I'm going to move down my list, but this school is interested and I'm going to reconnect with them. It really does sound like a sales role in that sense.
[0:26:32] BS: Yeah, absolutely. We have a lot of robust tools that we use. We have a CRM specifically for college. We have all of our interaction history. We have next day as a follow up. Basically, everything in there. Most people in the space in the Olympic world, they have something similar. They have some sort of tracking. If you're in any sales role, you have some tracking mechanism on when to follow up with people.
Generally speaking, when it comes to the soft no, the soft no generally means to us to continue to provide them information as things develop. One of the big points that we had talked about was the women's championship. That's a big news story, that we made sure everybody who we talked to knew about it. Because we wanted to make sure that all these schools that are considering to add sports, see there could be an opportunity to add a women's team sport, or women's sport at their university and win a championship.
I will say, the other selling point for division two and division three schools is the opportunity to compete against division one schools. Because it is cross division. We take that into account as well, just when discussing fencing, where that may not otherwise be an option. You may not have the option as a division three school to go to Northwestern's campus and compete in the chiller duels. You may not have the opportunity to go to UCSD and compete at their competition. You may not have the opportunity to go over to Temple, or to other D1 out on the East Coast to be able to participate against those. Those are great student athlete opportunities.
I do want to flag that piece as well of just from an additional selling point. It is a really fascinating thing. Bryan, I think you and your team, you do a great job of marketing these things out as well. Whenever something exciting, cool, or newsworthy happens, what's missed here is the marketing efforts as well that you guys do. To be able to communicate with these universities, we send out basically invitation emails to every NAC, or schools within a 50 to 100-mile radius to come by and check it out as a touchpoint, of for better or for worse, we're in these people's inboxes all the time.
Yes, there's still people who don't necessarily know about fencing, but a lot of our work is around the awareness of fencing, that this is an existing NCA championship sport since World War II. It’s a proud and emerging sport, so we don't necessarily get the coverage of emerging sports, like women's flag football, or a wrestling, or an acro, or tumbling. We are an existing sport trying to grow, which has its own unique challenges to it.
[0:29:07] BW: Yeah, trying to grow and succeeding at growing, too, right? I imagine that once you started at USA fencing and added your first NCAA program, I know that that was the hardest one, because a lot of people don't want to be the first, right? Then I want to say, “I don't want to stick my toe in this water just yet.” But you have now got such great momentum, just three schools recently that we've talked about, Arcadia, FDU and Denison adding programs. More are in the pipeline. Hopefully, we'll be able to announce some of those soon. It's just a really exciting time in collegiate fencing.
I'm wondering, not to denigrate other college sports, but what are you seeing in other college sports? Because as someone seeing it from a little bit of the outside, I'm seeing headlines that schools are having to cut programs coming out of that house settlement that you talked about, and just other challenges facing schools from enrollment and declines to funding dips to a number of other things. How does fencing compare to those other college sports?
[0:30:07] BS: Right now, we're one of three sports that are in the net positive of sports being added over the last couple of years. You see a lot of cuts when it comes to swimming, diving, track and field, indoor track and field. You're seeing cuts to a softball, some women's gymnastics most recently with Iowa State for other reasons. When it comes down to it, there are really three main sports that are netting in the positive right now. Women's flag football, which has the backing of the NFL. You have women's wrestling, which shout out to Wrestle like a Girl and a lot of the grassroots community work that they've done over the last decade or so. They've really grown women's wrestling. It's sanctioned in a lot of states. They've done a great job. They have a whole organization dedicated to that with Wrestle like a Girl, and it's been very successful.
To that point, I mean, and then there's us. I mean, you have acro and tumbling as well as an emerging sport. They've added 10-plus over the last couple of years as well. But then, you have us that have net positive, three going on four schools. Everyone else is in the negative. You have men's tennis being dropped in some schools, at UTAP, Eastern Illinois. You have women's tennis. You have softball dropping. You have baseball dropping at some schools. The house settlement is doing some damage on some of these schools when it comes to the sports. It's not just the house settlement, it's also the enrollment cliff.
The enrollment cliff, if you don't know, for our listeners who don't know, then enrollment cliff is a decline in students, available students to go to school that are 18 years old. I mean, it's primarily driven by the post-2008 recession, where a birth rates just declined. Now we're starting to see, those kids are going off to school. Well, if you have declining birth rates in 2007, 2008, 18-year-olds coming through, you're starting to see less and less kids that are going off to school, because the pool is just smaller, especially domestically. If you have a smaller school, or a smaller pool, you have less kids going off to university in general, you start to see schools close in general.
Most recently, a college just closed. I don't have the exact numbers, but it feels like every six months, you see a school closing. When schools close, they don't just reopen. There's a lot of other factors going on when it comes to adding sports. We look at this from obviously, a fencing perspective. But I want to make sure people are aware of the larger picture here, right? There's less available students being able to go to school. You have schools closing. You have some other challenges with the NCAA when it comes to their lawsuits. In some cases, it's creating a perfect storm for schools to either drop their athletics program. I mean, we've seen a few schools to just drop athletics programs, whether it be right out of COVID, or recently, closed their school, cut programs, cut opportunities.
We know that there are some even, fencing schools that are cutting scholarship opportunities, because the school itself is moving that money over to revenue generating sports. For us to be able to say, look, we're about to add four schools, it's pretty impressive. It's not just a pat on our back. This is work that a lot of the community has done over time as well. It's difficult to sell when you don't see the growth that we've been experiencing, especially at the grassroots level, the pre-high school level, the high school age. We're going to be approaching 47,000 members this year. It's a lot of work on the grassroots community. Those numbers are the numbers that we show athletic directors, when it comes to pipeline data.
They're seeing these as, okay, what is that long-term pipeline look like? As we continue to grow, they see that this is more sustainable long term, which then gives them the confidence to be able to start a program and sustain it.
[0:34:07] BW: Right. Sustainability is what I wanted to talk about next, because you can as an athletic director, considering fencing, think about not just what it would take logistically to add a fencing program next season, or the season after. Do we have the space? Do we have the storage? Do we have the coaches, which we could do a whole episode about how we help find coaches for these programs? There's so many great coaches at clubs out there who would love to work at the NCAA level. We’ll table that just for now. When you think about sustainability, part of it is, yes, the growth of the pipeline and you and your membership colleagues are doing a fantastic job there as we reach our goals for fencing membership this season and beyond. How do colleges think about sustainability and how do we work with existing programs to make sure that they're going to be around for a long time?
[0:35:01] BS: Yeah. A lot of the sustainability efforts come down to recruiting, right? Universities see their programs, and not every university is the same. I'm going to generalize here, because I don't want to necessarily get into specifics, or specific conversations with university coaches and whatnot. Generally, universities see success of their programs as how many kids you can bring in. Not everyone there. You have the early programs, your Notre Dame's, your Harvard's, your Ivy's, that they're trying to win championships. There are some schools that that might not be realistic and that's okay. They see as how many students we can get on campus. Can we give them a really good student athlete experience? Where they can then say proudly that I was a student athlete at insert school. I had a great time. I'm still friends with my teammates to this day. I want to go back and become either a ambassador for the school, or for the program. Or when I go out to NACs as a vet fencer, I want to say proudly that I fenced at this school, right? Those are the long-term success pieces.
Short term, it's, can you fill the roster? Can you fill a full roster? In order to do that from a short-term perspective, we've implemented a number of different tactics and the strategy to help these universities. The first was our recruiting 101 panels and our college fair at NACs. The recruiting 101 panels at NACs, if you've never been to one, or you feel that your kid’s not ready for this, show up, just come on by. They're hosted at the October NAC, JOs and summer nationals. Generally speaking, that's where we see a good amount of high school aged, or about to become high school aged students. We want to make sure that we're educating them and give them the opportunities to hear from coaches about this is what recruiting actually looks like. This is how to put your best foot forward. This is why you shouldn't have your parent, or coach yell at you on the strip, or yell at referees, right? At the end of the day, coaches see that.
[0:37:12] BW: Yeah, of course.
[0:37:13] BS: It shapes and opinion of the fencer. Parents listening, just think twice before yelling at a referee, please.
[0:37:20] BW: That's good advice, whether your kid is going to be a college fencer someday, or not. But yes, I agree completely.
[0:37:28] BS: Bryan, there's a lot of college coaches that are referees at these events.
[0:37:31] BW: Oh, true, true.
[0:37:33] BS: You may accidentally be yelling at a college coach.
[0:37:36] BW: We've heard college coaches tell us that they're actually, when they're watching, whether actively or actively scouting, or passively just watching someone fence, they actually have told me they'd get just as much information from seeing that fencer lose as when. Sometimes the best check mark in the box, if I want to recruit this athlete, the student athlete can be like, oh, they lost 15, 14, but they went over, shook the hand of the ref and their opponent, then talked to their coach for 15 minutes about what they can do better next time. This was a really great moment, and that fencer is now on my do recruit list, right? I'm taking the positive road there, but you could also imagine the opposite being true, right?
[0:38:21] BS: Yeah, absolutely. It's very fascinating to hear those stories, right?
[0:38:25] BW: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:38:26] BS: Along those lines, the other in person recruiting opportunity we have is the college fair. College fairs are generally reserved for rising, or current juniors and rising, or current seniors, depending on the time of year that you go. We do college fairs at October NAC, junior Olympics, and at summer nationals.
Generally speaking, we have anywhere between 25 and 30 schools show up as represented schools. Could be their coach, their head coach, their assistant coach, some cases, universities also bring along existing, or current student athletes to talk about the program. It's a great opportunity to learn about what's out there. I highly recommend it. Even if you've already made up your college decision, go do it. Just talk to people. Make sure you feel at the end of the day that you're making the right decision for you as a student athlete, and parents, you're making the best financial decision for your athlete as well. It's a family decision.
At the end of the day, we want to make sure that our parents and our members are getting the information that's needed in order to make that decision, because it's tough. It's a tough decision, especially if it's your first time going through it. You want to get as much information as possible, which is why we do the college fairs, why we do the recruiting one-on-one sessions. We've recently launched College Connect. College Connect is our centralized recruiting database. Connects student athletes in high school with our colleges. You can see college profiles, understand what colleges are out there that offer varsity fencing. You can message those coaches directly, if you want to talk to them. Even if you just want to ask, “Hey, I want to learn a little bit more about your program.” Those types of questions are very, in a lot of cases, very well received by coaches, because they see that you're looking, you're trying to do your research before making that decision.
Not everybody who fences in college is an A-rated fencer. Not everyone who fences in college is on the international circuit. There are some, and you see that elite level fencing, but there's a vast majority that are B, C, D, E. In some cases, you rated fencers. Maybe they just didn't have the opportunity to go to some of those ranked events. Maybe they started in high school and didn't ever go to a regional event, or a local event to get rated, right? That's okay. You can still fence in college. Just talk to people and don't be afraid. College Connect for us was a way to break down that barrier, between talking to coaches and make it a little bit easier for people.
[0:41:00] BW: Yeah. College Connect has been yet another great development in the collegiate fencing landscape. Brad, when you look three to five years ahead down the road, thinking about the work that you're doing, what would make you say, this is working? What we're doing at the collegiate development level is working. I mean, I'd argue it already is working. Let's jump ahead another three or five years. What would make you say, “Oh, wow. This work that all of us are doing,” led by you, “is really making a difference”?
[0:41:28] BS: That's a great question. I'm very proud of what we've been able to accomplish. Not many sports can say what we've accomplished over the last decade, much less the last two years. I think we need to take a moment to recognize just the work that's been done in fencing in general. We're about to add our fourth school. We've added a women's championship. We've worked with the NCAA and our coaches committee to implement some other policies to help with recruiting. We've created the sustainable recruiting opportunities at our national events and virtually through College Connect as well.
There's been a lot of time and resource dedicated to this area. It's very impressive. Yes. The things that would say for me personally, and ultimately as the landscape continues to change, the collegiate landscape will continue to change over the next few years. How I would view success is yes, we want to add more programs, but through adding programs, making sure the current programs are still available for our athletes to access. I don't want to sound any alarms, or anything like that, but I think it's really important that we support all of our current and existing programs. Whether that be through going to the event, checking your local school’s website and seeing what competition opportunities are coming up that I can go check this out, or talking to them at the recruiting fairs.
Or in some cases, you have volunteer coaches that can go and help out with the school's program. Armorers are always in demand, right? I think for us, it's the sustainability element is equally, if not as important as the growth element.
[0:43:16] BW: Yeah. Because it's a lot easier to retain an existing program than to, as you've discovered, than to add a brand new one. Okay, Brad. Last question. For people listening, parents, coaches, club owners, fencers themselves, even administrators, academic administrators, where can they help? They say, “All this great work is being done. I'd rather get out there and roll up my sleeves and help, than just cheer on from the sidelines.” We need the cheering, too. Please, continue to celebrate these wins and celebrate college fencing in general. But what can the fencing community actually do if they want to help support this work?
[0:43:54] BS: Yeah, look, I'll say this, the cheering is great. Love the cheering. We love when we see on social media that somebody has committed to so and so school and we see the hundreds of retweets, or hundreds of comments. The cheering is great. Going to the events, cheering them on and supporting, right? You can support in so many different ways. As parents, the first thing I would say to parents is do your research. If your student athlete is telling you, “I want to do this academic program,” odds are that there's a fencing school with that program.
At the end of the day, we have 46. Hopefully, by the end of this year, this calendar year, we’ll add more. It's easy to go and check all those academic programs and seeing what's out there. Put my athlete, fence varsity, and do the academic program to set them up for a long-term successful career, right? From parents, make sure you're doing your research, seeing what's out there.
At the end of the day, you may choose not to go to a fencing school. That's okay. There's plenty of other opportunities. That's my one ask for parents out there. If you have any questions on that, you can reach out to us. We're happy to point you in the right directions on certain elements, information@usafencing.org. For my club owners out there, our athletic directors, the participation data that they use is our membership data. We show them, here's the pipeline. At the end of the day, if they see the pipeline is shrinking, they're less willing to add the sport. That's the reality. For my club owners out there who are listening to this and saying, well, USA fencing, yada, yada, whatever, USA fencing is trying to provide opportunities for your athletes. We are. We're actively doing that.
Our ask to use to make sure that you have all your athletes become members of USA fencing. We use that data in order to show athletic directors, SWAs, presidents of universities that the sport is growing and the sport is continuing to grow year over year. The other ask for the fencing community, if you happen to know somebody in a leadership role at a university in an athletic department, feel free to connect us. A lot of those connections between a university and USA fencing happen, because someone in the fencing community happens to know so and so at this athletic department. That's a great way to get an intro, where we then can go in and help with financial feasibility tools, we do site visits. We perform the suite of services to make sure that these programs are doing the right thing, and make sure they can launch a sustainable long-term program.
If you're listening to this right now and you've made it through my rambles, hey, I appreciate it. If you're part of the fencing community, you can always donate and help support some of these collegiate funds. If you have any capacity to give, we have a collegiate fund that helps fund a lot of these programs through our grant programs. What we've been doing has been great, but we can always improve on things. Bryan, what you've been doing on the marketing side for elevating these programs, promoting the new programs, getting the word out there has been fantastic as well, and what others have been doing within the organization, both currently and past, to get where we are right now has been just incredibly impressive.
[0:47:12] BW: Yeah, it's been really fun and rewarding journey. Brad, thanks so much for giving some of your time today. To me, this conversation shows that college fencing doesn't happen by accident. It takes vision, persistence, and someone who can connect the dots between what's happening on the strip, the sport we all love, we're huge fans of, and what it actually might mean to a college campus that has fencing, or could in the future. There was the historic women's championship at Notre Dame. There's the work being done with new programs. We didn't even have time to get into the great HBCU outreach you're doing, which is huge. I encourage people to just Google HBCU incubator fencing and they're going to find some of the work that's happening there, as we work toward adding fencing at some of those historically black colleges and universities.
There's a lot of reason for optimism, both about what's already happened and what's coming soon. Thanks, Brad. Thanks to everybody for listening. Please share this episode, like and subscribe. That helps us reach more people with this great conversation. Thank you, Brad, and we'll see you next time.
[0:48:15] BS: Thank you, Bryan.
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[0:48:17] BW: Thanks for listening to First of 15, the official podcast of USA Fencing. We'll be back with our next conversation in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, you can stay up to date on all the latest fencing news by following us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. If you like this podcast, please help us grow and reach more people by leaving us a rating, or review. Until next time, I'm Bryan Wendell, and I hope to see you real soon out on the strip. Bye.
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