Three-time Olympian and team bronze medalist Courtney Hurley OLY has shifted from the strip to the coach’s chair, bringing elite standards and a growth-first culture to Albuquerque. She’s joined by Chris Ferrara, Assistant Head of School at Menaul School, who lays out how a liberal-arts model (mind–body–spirit) and intentional academic support help teens thrive as student-athletes. Together they unpack time management, motivation, the parent’s role, how to structure daily fencing within the school day, and why their Menaul × Duke City Fencing partnership is accelerating progress for newcomers and competitors alike.
Season 2, Episode 18
Guests:
Courtney Hurley OLY — Three-time Olympian (team bronze), Head Coach, Duke City Fencing; program lead at Menaul School
Chris Ferrara — Assistant Head of School & Upper School Director, Menaul School (Albuquerque, NM)
What we cover
Courtney’s transition from Olympian to coach: passing on elite habits, culture-building, and motivation
The liberal-arts lens (Chris): teaching how to think, not what to think; “high challenge, high support” academics
Why daily, in-school training matters: Menaul’s 70–85 minute fencing block every day, plus after-school lessons and club bouting
Time management that works: block schedules, LMS support on travel days, concrete checkpoints from advisors/homeroom
The parent role: authoritative (not authoritarian); building habits and internal drive without a pressure cooker
Competition as fuel: why early meets accelerate learning and buy-in
Building a regional pipeline: growing Albuquerque’s fencing scene—and why a smaller state can be a strategic advantage
The three-weapon vision: adding dedicated foil/saber coaches, strength training, and an NCAA-style structure
Scholar-athlete outcomes: how varsity-level sport correlates with college success—and how fencing fits college admissions
Links
Learn more about Menaul School’s fencing program (with Duke City Fencing):
https://www.menaulschool.org/fencing-find-your-edge/
Timestamps
0:00 — Two perspectives, one goal: student-athletes who thrive
1:17 — Courtney: fencing was “who I am”—why coaching was the natural next step
2:30 — Chris: the liberal-arts case for scholar-athletes (mind–body–spirit)
4:57 — Using fencing strategically in college planning
5:24 — Courtney’s scholar-athlete path: school support + travel reality
7:21 — Western travel culture & flexible academics (LMS on the road)
8:36 — Teaching time management: high challenge, high support
10:16 — Coach’s role: priorities, buy-in, and aligning goals
11:30 — A week in the life: daily fencing block (70–85 min), block classes, after-school lessons
14:55 — Culture shift in ABQ: from hobby to competitive
16:18 — Why daily training compresses learning curves
17:12 — The three-to-five-year plan: three weapons, S&C, university-style structure
18:26 — Why athletics belong in school: GPA + varsity sport = college success
20:45 — Life skills from fencing: perseverance, interviews, careers
22:09 — The parent balance: building habits & ownership
26:26 — Making fencing the best part of the day (present-moment focus)
27:55 — What Courtney gets from coaching: a new challenge, new results
30:07 — Fit questions for families considering Menaul
33:00 — Why boarding + fencing can unlock opportunity
34:51 — Putting Albuquerque on the map—competitively
36:36 — A small-state advantage in college admissions
Quotable
“You’re a club before you’re a team—culture keeps kids showing up. But daily reps inside the school day? That’s what accelerates progress.” — Courtney Hurley
“The #1 predictor of college success is GPA; the #2 is participation in varsity-level sports.” — Chris Ferrara
Call to action
Curious about the school-day fencing model? Explore Menaul’s program and how it pairs with Duke City Fencing: https://www.menaulschool.org/fencing-find-your-edge/
Credits
Host: Bryan Wendell • Guests: Courtney Hurley OLY & Chris Ferrara
SEASON 2 EPISODE 18
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:01] BW: Two perspectives, one goal. On one side, we've got Courtney Hurley, a three-time Olympian and team bronze medalist, who's now coaching and building fencers in Albuquerque, New Mexico. On the other, we have Chris Ferrara, Assistant Head of School and Upper School Director who's a liberal arts educator and thinks deeply about how teens learn, train, and grow.
Welcome back to First to 15. I'm Brian Wendell. Today, we've got a couple of guests for you. We're going to start with Courtney's journey and the coaching lens. Then we'll weave in Chris's view on what actually works for student athletes and then use their new program at Menaul School in partnership with Duke City Fencing as a case study for balancing academics and high-level training. Hey, Courtney and Chris, let's dive in.
[0:00:46] CH: Hello.
[0:00:46] CF: Great to be here.
[0:00:46] BW: Yeah, it's good to have you both, and you're in the same spot. Sometimes when we have two guests, they're spread out, but it's great to have everybody in the room. Courtney, obviously, you've got such a legendary story in fencing and are a household name in the fencing community. But for you, when did fencing become more than just an activity, but part of who you are in a sense, and something that you've now been able to weave into your post-competitive career?
[0:01:17] CH: Well, fencing has always been who I am. Much, the transition was tough when I was thinking of transitioning out of fencing. I was like, “What do I do? How do I do this?” But flowing into coaching just made way more sense, because again, I have so much fencing knowledge and it was a who I am for so many years. To pass it on, this was so easy and necessary. I mean, I have so much knowledge to not pass it on, it would be criminal. It was a fairly easy transition from athlete to coach and mentor. So, yeah.
[0:01:51] BW: I got to say, it helps with when you have the name recognition that you do as well, because you come with such a great track record that when someone sees Courtney Hurley, they know, okay, she knows what she's talking about, which is nice and it brings a lot of that credibility.
Chris, you're an educator who champions this broad liberal arts foundation. What habits from that approach can set student athletes up to thrive, both in sports, specifically fencing, but also in academics? How do you use that broad foundation that Menaul School and others are so great at to help student athletes succeed both on and off of the playing surface?
[0:02:30] CF: I mean, I think some of the things that we understand about education is that a lot of the things that we do, we have understood that they work for a long time, and that everybody's always trying to adjust the formula. I guess, at Menaul, we say, the formula doesn't really need a ton of adjustment. We just need to do it really well. That's teaching kids how to think, not what to think, having a broad base of knowledge. This is something that society is really struggling with right now. We're seeing this with AI. We're seeing this with just how prepared people are, not just to go out into the world and get that first job, but to actually be informed members of society, citizens who are going to use their education to make meaningful connections with how the world works.
When it comes to liberal arts education, it's just that. They're hitting everything. They're hitting English, history, mathematics, science, and that we want to do it all well to set these kids up to really know what they're wanting to do in the future. That's where athletics is a huge part of that as well, that we are a pretty traditional school in that sense. And so, we want our kids to be scholar athletes. Fencing is an incredible opportunity. It's mental chess, right? Or physical chess. Physical chess. We do mental chess with the actual chess club.
[0:04:01] BW: Yeah, there's a lot of parallels.
[0:04:03] CF: Yeah. But we want kids to have that broad experience. That's what it's all about. We want them to be able to be on the fencing team, but also on the basketball team, but also learning how to maximize their education, so that they can go to whatever college that they want to go to. We're pretty traditional in a lot of senses like that. We're really not a high-tech school. We’re tech skeptical, maybe. There's a time I could talk about in terms of that. I want to focus on the fencing, which is an incredible way for kids to get active. It's an incredible way for kids to plan out where they want to go to college to. They’re a strategic element to using fencing to get into some incredible schools. That's an important part for any college prep school is we want to maximize our kids' ability to go where they want to go and do what they want to do.
[0:04:57] BW: Yeah. I want to dive into that also throughout our conversation. Courtney, let's bring in you here. What was your experience as a, maybe you didn't even call yourself this, but a scholar athlete growing up, and then eventually, you went to Notre Dame, which obviously, great school, great fencing program. What was your experience like trying to juggle all of these different things? Do you feel like you had a broad base of knowledge entering Notre Dame?
[0:05:24] CH: Yeah, I didn't have a normal upbringing. But I got incredibly lucky with the school that I went to. They were incredibly lenient of traveling and going into places and just making up the work when I got back. People, I mean, honestly, they hardly see me. In high school, I was traveling so much to World Cups, and the most schools are not okay with that. Most schools. I got, again, incredibly lucky. They were super supportive of my fencing. That's a huge thing is the school being – Also, university. Not just high school, but university being supportive of travel. They're usually not super supportive of fencing.
I had an unusual high school experience, but I had the grades and I had good test scores, so I was able to go get accepted to the University of Notre Dame. That was something we also never really thought we would do. We would start fencing. We thought we would just go to any school, just a normal person, but we didn't realize we had a capability of, we also didn't have that much knowledge. I mean, now we have more knowledge of fencing at universities and US fencing really puts forth more information about that. Back when, it was not that much information, like I never even got recruited until the last second people were like, “Oh, you want to go to university?” It was a much different world back then. Not much information.
At University of Notre Dame, they're very, very supportive and a really great program there. They were supportive of my travel. I got lucky. But most people don't experience that luckiness to travel and have support behind you from all different angles. That's the big reason why I was successful. That is a big factor here that they know about the fencing, they know what it takes. We've had many conversations of what fencing, the high level takes, much travel and how much time commitment. They're willing to be really supportive here.
[0:07:21] CF: I went out on being in a Western school. Anybody who deals with athletics in a Western school to travel here. Compared to where I grew up, I grew up in New York. Here, we regularly get on the bus every week for six to eight hours one way to go play a game. We've always had that built into our culture, that to support student athletes, academics needs to be flexible. The areas where technology really does make that effective is with our learning management system, canvas, they can access that content while they're gone. Keep up with things as much as possible. That's really what the goal is that we can support our athletes to go and do these things that are going to make them successful.
[0:08:07] BW: Yeah, and a challenge with that, it occurs to me is when you are traveling for sports as a teenager, you have to have that self-motivation, because you don't have a teacher over your shoulder saying, “Hey, this assignment is due at the end of class here.” You aren't in the classroom sometimes to have that. What is your philosophy to teaching that time management, that responsibility, that honestly, is a lesson that's going to stay with that student well beyond when they graduate from your program?
[0:08:36] CF: We know that a lot of things that maybe my generation and older generations took for granted. They're more difficult for kids now. There are so many things pulling them in different directions. If you look at, say, the recidivism rate for lack of attendance, it's really high. I think in most school districts now, approximately 20% to 30% of kids are chronically absent. For us, that's not something that we have to deal with, because one of the cores of our academic program at Menaul School is this idea of high challenge, high support.
We know that some of the things that kids struggle with, they need more concrete and clear support to accomplish that. We do have to help them a little bit more with things that we would consider scheduling, keeping tasks on track. We are strict with making sure that things are due, because we think that teaches them the right skills, but we have people, academic advisors, homeroom teachers who are really going to reach out and make sure that kids are not getting off track. We really do manage that a lot more carefully than certainly I experienced growing up as a kid, where if you were late, or didn't turn something in, well, too bad. We really try to make sure that kids have a great deal more support, so that they can get what they need to get back. Because we're asking them to do a lot more, too.
[0:10:05] BW: Courtney, what do you see as your role there in supporting the whole person and making sure that they're succeeding in all the different ways that they want?
[0:10:16] CH: Yeah. I definitely noticed that – I mean, this generation. I don't know if it's all generations, but on one team, as my first generation of coaching, that most of these kids have so many things going on and that's one thing that's tough is to, okay, let's focus on one thing here and put priorities and what's more important to them. I'm very lenient of understanding that there's other things to life than fencing. It's not like, know how, I'm not – it's not me. A lot of parents, a lot of coaches have that trouble in the life, okay, it's not about me, it's got them, in order to other people, not what's important to you. But also, making sure that if it is important, if it is their priority, then we have the right road to go down and what it takes to what they want to achieve and what they want to achieve.
[0:11:05] BW: Let's dive a little bit more into the realities of juggling all these different priorities. Can you give us a typical week for someone who is a college bound student at Menaul, like, what is the athletic schedule? What type of schoolwork schedule do they have? When do they actually have time to sleep? Things like that. What does a week look like? Either of you could answer that.
[0:11:30] CF: I mean, from the academic side and the extracurricular, if I'm looking at a college bound student, maybe somewhere around 10th or 11th grade, they're taking somewhere between, hopefully, two to five AP classes each semester. Those are challenging courses. That's college level work. Because that's what the colleges need to see to say, “Yes, you are checking the box for greater.” We are looking at extracurriculars and not just in the athletic side, but they've got to be on some kind of a club. They've got to be not just in a club, but developing a leadership experience. Yeah, you want to be in model UN, but you want to be developing towards a model UN presidency. Something where you really show leadership, because this is what colleges need to see.
In addition to that, if we're imagining approximately an hour of homework per class every night for a lot of those challenging courses, we're looking at somewhere between two to three hours of homework on an average evening. Athletics, we'll talk about how we incorporate fencing into the structure of the day, which really does help that a lot. If I'm on the basketball team, that's two hours after school. If I'm on the football team, two hours after school. We know that to get into these competitive environments, they are asking kids to be successful in 11 separate dimensions.
They've got to be volunteering. They've got to be leaders. They've got to be in extracurriculars. They've got to be making all these things happen. It's more than we've ever asked them to do. It is absolutely more. Having active management of that is really key. In terms of the fencing side –
[0:13:21] BW: Yeah. Please, Courtney.
[0:13:22] CH: Yeah. We have middle school and high school here and the middle school trains for 70 minutes.
[0:13:31] CF: 70 minutes per day.
[0:13:32] CH: Per day?
[0:13:33] CF: Yeah.
[0:13:33] CH: Then the high school is 85.
[0:13:36] CF: 85.
[0:13:38] CH: Yes, 85. I combine them, too, at some point, because I think it's good to get everyone fencing together. It's a lot. It's their most, I think, minute class.
[0:13:49] CF: Yeah. We have, and also we follow a block schedule with an A-day, B-day. Most kids are taking eight classes, but four on one day and then four the next day and it flip-flops. That's one of the ways we reduce the homework load, so that you're never having eight classes of homework due the next day. With our fencing program, our fencers have a fencing block every single day. They get that guaranteed, like if I'm in high school, I get 85 minutes of time every day. Then in addition to that, after school, they can do private lessons with Courtney. We also have Duke sitting on our campus. So, when those fencers come in in the afternoons and evening, they get to bout with other people.
Really, the sky is the limit for how much these kids can be fencing. They could be fencing up to three hours a day easily if they really wanted to. We've seen that development from the fencers who've only been doing it now for – they're just starting their fourth month, maybe.
[0:14:55] CH: Yeah. All these Menaul kids have just started, I think, in August, September. It's a big transition. It's also a cultural one. That is a big one that I've been trying to change. I just came to Albuquerque last year. And so, changing the culture more competitive and opening up more opportunities for fencing, instead of just having this like a hobby. It's a culture shift that bend in the process of doing and we're in the process of starting at Menaul, taking fencing to a different level. We just had our first global competition here. One of the Menaul kids got third, Y14 out of 16 kids.
[0:15:32] BW: Nice.
[0:15:33] CH: 16 kids. She’s also been fencing for a few months. Yeah, it's going pretty well.
[0:15:38] BW: That's going to feel really, really good.
[0:15:40] CH: Yeah.
[0:15:41] CF: That's what the trust is in the program is when you build an NCAA fencing schedule that is really just getting kids fencing every day with the highest level of expertise in the business, they improve really, really quickly. They're going to develop and become competitive by the time they're done with the program.
[0:16:02] CH: Yeah. I mean, in the first few months, there was such a huge improvement. You're doing it five days a week, but most kids are not doing classes five days a week and fencing, we fence four days a week, but they give them a day off video analysis.
[0:16:18] BW: It accelerates the timeline, basically, right? Because a student might be taking one class a week at a traditional fencing club, right? Five weeks’ worth of progress is condensed into a single week, hypothetically, right?
[0:16:31] CH: Right. Yeah, most of the Duke city kids, they're taking on two classes a week. That's the normal. That's normal for most fencing clubs are two, three days class of the week, and that’s pretty normal. Yeah, five days is a lot.
[0:16:44] CF: It's two days a week at the end of the day, after they've done everything. They've gone to school all day. It can be, the end of the day is a challenging time of the day to really say, “Okay, I'm going to get back into learning and activity.” Again, and they're so busy.
[0:17:00] BW: Courtney, thinking specifically about the fencing program at Menaul, where would you like to see it in, let's say, three, five years, if you're looking at the current trajectory of what you all have already started to grow there?
[0:17:12] CH: Yeah. Well, I would like to see – we were on the timeline of mimicking a university program, but what things need to happen is that we need to have assigning coach at bay. There are three different sports. I can't really coach – Well, I mean, I could probably coach maybe a very, very beginner level, but we would want to add a coach for foil and sabre and have all three weapons and have weight training a few days a week. A university-type schedule, that's what I'm aiming towards, so that they can be prepared for university fencing and also, their own personal goals, doing well in competition nationally, internationally. That's the goal.
[0:17:58] BW: Chris, can we talk just zooming out a little bit? Can you explain why even incorporate athletics into the program at all? If someone, a real skeptic says, you're taking time out of the classroom for them to go do fencing for 70, or 85 minutes during the day. Of course, I understand the value there, but how would you explain to someone who says, “Couldn't they be spending that time in the library researching X, Y, or Z?”
[0:18:26] CF: When we look at what makes a student successful in college, this is an area where you really want to dive into the data. The number one determinant of success in university is GPA. It's how well do you do in your classes in school. The second determinant of success, it's not standardized test scores, it's not how much you, or how well you memorized some information, it's actually participation in varsity level sports. This is something that I didn't know before I came to this school and really started diving into like, what do we really need to do? I was maybe more of an academically-minded person.
I would say, that understanding that and seeing what a student actually has to do in terms of learning life skills, resiliency, dedication, that you set a goal and you do what's necessary to accomplish that goal, you don't give up, those are absolutely the skills that happen in competitive level sports. That's not necessarily the skills that happen in an everyday English class. Those skills actually allow kids to be more successful in university and then, obviously, in life. With a school like Menaul, our literal mission is we educate students in mind, body, and spirit. That has been a core component of who we are since the beginning. That's where that athletic piece really comes in. It's that, that's going to help, yeah, your body, but obviously, your mind and your spirit as well, because it's giving you that drive to be successful, to be competitive. It really is a key component more than I had originally thought of. I've gotten my kids into competitive athletics, because of that.
[0:20:16] BW: Yeah, that's super fascinating. Courtney, what was your experience like there entering college as somebody who had dealt with all the different things that a high-level athlete has to deal with? Everything from the travel, the pressure, dealing with other people, knowing how to lose, right? Because you didn't win every bout. No athlete does. How did you incorporate those lessons not into your fencing at Notre Dame necessarily, but into the academic side and even your life beyond graduation?
[0:20:45] CH: Yeah. I think what Chris was saying was absolutely true that fencing brings out all these different parts of your life, perseverance. Fencing's a lot about perseverance. That shows in other part of my life. If I want something and I go and get it and I don't stop until I get it, that's definitely from fencing. This is all these things you learn from all these sports as drives how you interact with life. Fencing is a huge reason why I'm so successful in getting to Notre Dame. I was definitely more of a jock.
I know it wasn’t my number one. It was definitely my number two, but I obviously had had number one in order to do number two. Fencing really developed these traits that helped me through all parts of life, or a school, or interviews for a job and coaching. That's developed these different kinds of traits that really helps you through life.
[0:21:47] CF: I think Courtney sold herself short a little bit, too. She has a tremendous intellect. This is someone who, when I've had to say like, “Hey, let's write this up, or let's do this thing, she just drives it through and produces incredible content, and she's so smart and she's so well-spoken. They did a really good job. She did a really good job.
[0:22:09] BW: Yeah. You all are lucky to have her for sure. Chris, what's the role of the parent here in a scholar athlete? How can they support without being overbearing and making sure that the student, the scholar athlete, whatever term we want to use, owns the process themselves?
[0:22:29] CF: When it comes to parenting success, it's a really hard line to walk. What we like to talk about is there's different styles of parenting. There's the permissive parent who says, “Hey, what do you want to do? Okay, whatever you want to do, that's fantastic.” There's the authoritarian parent who says, “You're doing what my plan is to do and that's what we're going to do.” Then there's the authoritative parent. It's honestly really tough. I don't have a great answer for you, because one of the things that I'll say is probably 90% of the kids who get to Olympic level probably have authoritarian parents. They probably have parents who said, “You're going to wake up and you're going to practice this and you're going to do this for these years of your life,” because there maybe wasn't yet developed that level of motivation.
What we want and the culture that we want to develop is the authoritative model. We really want to say, “Hey, I want to give you a pathway. Hey, I want to provide experts who can really guide you along that pathway.” But we don't want the incredible pressure cooker of you've got to be the best. Otherwise, you're a washout. You're not successful. Success comes from building the right habits. You can't just flick a switch. You have to build that slowly over time. Kids see that they're being successful and that builds this sense where now they're motivated internally. They really see, “Okay, what I'm doing, this pathway that people are laying out for me, I see it's successful.” For a kid like Sophia, who came in with, yeah, a little bit of a martial arts background, but no fencing background. But we were the guys. I don't think her parents ever came to me and said, “You've got to make Sophia develop into this kind of a fencer by this day.”
Really, it was about, we trust you to provide the right structure, the right supports and that this is a place where she can be as successful as she wants to be. She's taken it pretty far in a short time. I guess, that's what I would distill it to, authoritative rather than authoritarian. I'm certainly not going to say it doesn't work, because parents like, Tiger Woods’ parents, Venus William's parents, that's how they did. It's really hard to say you can't do that.
[0:24:59] BW: Courtney, what's your perspective there as someone who made it to the very highest levels of fencing?
[0:25:05] CH: I would say, that we're in a new generation of that authoritarian doesn't really work so well anymore. We have a lot more resources about mental health, and I'm trying to instill – because for me, again, I was lucky. My family, my parents were super supportive. They never told me I had to do something. It was kind of not sit out loud, but it was definitely like, “Oh, we should keep that same, because you're really good.” No one really forced me. No one held me over fire, but that was within myself. I got lucky again. That’s really what it boils down to is luck is what my dad would say. It's all about luck.
There were a lot of successful athletes that were held over fire saying, “You have to do this. You have to train next Monday, like nine hours.” That really doesn't lend its way with the mental part of sports. I think this generation has a even more rough, like figuring out how do we balance working hard and working, and also not bringing out and not hating what I'm doing. It's the first generation to figure this out. It's a thing to balance, and that's what we're all trying to figure out, sort of.
[0:26:26] CF: There's so many pressures. The kids have so many pressures. Like Courtney said, they are much better about advocating like, hey, maybe this is too much pressure. Maybe we need to step back. That's why a supportive environment is what we want to build here. That's why I trust Courtney to be the ones who build that and say like, “All right, this is how we get competitive. This is how we up our games, without taking it to the level of getting unhealthy, getting to a place where kids don't want to be in a fencing program.”
One of the things that I will say, never told you this, but I've heard this from our students, fencing is the best part of their day. When they say like, “Hey, fencing is a time where I step out of the pressure to some degree and I get in here and I'm just being active. I'm in the moment. I'm not worried about what comes later.” They're just really being able to be kids and being able to participate and really fun and challenging athletics with the person who supports them and is pushing them to be better, without turning it into like, an [inaudible 0:27:36].
[0:27:37] BW: It has a purpose too, like we've been saying. It's fun and it's active but there's an underlying purpose. Courtney, what do you get out of this experience? Obviously, you're giving so much to these students, but what's enjoyable about it for you? What makes you so excited to get up and go to work every day and teach these kids?
[0:27:55] CH: I would say, it's a new challenge for me. It's a new challenge to – I worked so hard my whole life for myself and getting myself motivated. Now it's a different challenge of getting other people motivated, getting other people competitive. I see it as a challenge, and a very interesting challenge, and it's not – it’s sort of innovative over here. It's really exciting and new, and I think that when I – again, when I want something, I go and get it and that's what I'm doing right now.
[0:28:33] BW: It's got to feel good when you see that some of the early results, too, so early, not that it's just all about the medals, but it does show that the coaching that you're doing is having some early success and you're on such a great track.
[0:28:45] CH: Yeah. I think it's really fun to see some of the kids who turn from, oh, like, goofy fencing. Some kids were just doing it for fun. But now that I'm pushing and I'm opening up more doors and they're getting more excited and they're training more, and that's the same slope within all that. They're seeing like, after the competition. Because it's so different when you just train every day and you don't compete. Then it's kind of, oh, no. Boring, I think. When there were a few kids, a few Menaul kids after the competition and even though they didn't do it particularly well, they were like, “This is so exciting. Now I want to come and train more. I want to get better.” It really motivates and see whenever you compete, to see what you're capable of, what other people are capable of. It gets you more hungry. That was really cool after that competition to see some of the Menaul kids like, “Okay, I really want to start training more.” That was really cool. Yeah, seeing everyone get motivated more and wanting to do the sport that I love so much more, that's very rewarding.
[0:29:46] BW: I love that. Chris, for families who are looking at a school like Menaul, or Menaul itself, that unique model that you all have there, how did they assess that whether it's the right fit? What's the maybe questions that they should ask you to themselves, or you, or the recruiter, the admissions person to see if this is the right fit for their child?
[0:30:07] CF: When it comes to, especially private schools, fit is the game. That's what we think about is, what's going to make a child be successful? Every day I have conversations with potential families, potential students, and we want to understand, what are they looking for? What are their goals? People go to private schools for a lot of different reasons. Every once in a while, someone come here and they'll say, “Yeah, what I'm really looking for is a place that isn't going to challenge them. That's just going to let them do what they want to do and just slide by.” We're like, “You're not really going to be happy here.”
When we're looking for a student, we're looking for that mind, body, spirit. We're looking for someone who really has an idea of their goals. For us, we're usually trying to say, “Okay. What's your college goal? What do you want to be doing? Do you have an idea of a future career? We have a lot of international kids. For these kids, you see the difference between American kids and kids from other countries, because these kids from other countries are hungry for success in a way that American students aren't always necessarily when you've grown up comfortable. Then you see someone who's like, “Hey, I'm a kid from Rwanda. I'm the first kid in my family who's been given the opportunity to go to college. I know that being able to go to a really strong school, that's not just going to change my life. That's going to change the trajectory of my entire family.” That is a huge thing for them.
Kids like that raise the bar. We're about 30% international there with 28 different countries. That really motivates our kids to say, okay, it isn't enough to just be like, “Yeah. Of course, I'm going to go to college and I'll slide by and what do I want to do? I don't know.” Because when you have kids in there who are highly motivated, that's really the number one thing that I look for. When I'm looking for a student, what are your motivations? What do you want to accomplish? If a kid has no motivations at all, or their motivations are all external, “Well, my mom and dad want me to accomplish this, or they're hoping that I do this,” that's not necessarily going to set them up for success. But when a kid says, “I want to be an athlete. I want to go to this college. I want to get this job,” those are levers that we can pull to help guide them to be successful.
[0:32:43] BW: Yeah. That's so well said. Meanwhile, that's such a great experience for those 70% of, I guess, we could call them non-international students to share a classroom with someone from Rwanda, or one of those other dozens of countries that are represented. It broadens their perspective as well, I have to think.
[0:33:00] CF: Yeah. No, for sure. Most of our international students are boarding. We do have some domestic borders. But that's also one of the things that we're hoping is that as we bring in fencers domestically, that's one of the opportunities. Because one of the things that I knew, I fenced after college. I took it up as a hobby. But I lived in a small town with a small club and there really weren't any opportunities. Nobody was really talking about getting competitive and nobody was really talking about how do you do something at a higher level? It was just, yeah, this is something we do for fun. I never had a coach who was anything like Courtney's level of expertise.
One of the things that I asked her when we were talking about this is, where does that kid who has to take an hour and a half one-way drive to get to that fencing club? How do they get there? What's that like for them? That they're dedicated, they want to be fencing, but maybe they don't have the opportunity locally. That's where we thought, well, a school with a boarding program could really be successful for that kid. That they'd be able to come to a place where they can have that focus and be able to get that expert level support that they need.
[0:34:14] BW: Yeah, because the reality is, we've got 800 fencing clubs across the country, but there are a lot of places where there's not one within an hour drive, so you have to have that dedication. Courtney, that actually brings me to something I wanted to ask you about, which is the state of fencing in Albuquerque. I love New Mexico. I love Albuquerque, but it's not considered the hotbed of fencing yet, right? It's not a fencing hot spot just yet. But where would you like to see Albuquerque and fencing in that region get to, so you can have even more competitive opportunities for your students and students who might be from other clubs in the area?
[0:34:51] CH: My goals are obviously one of the best. I'm trying to, I mean, drive kids. For one thing, just some baby steps right now, just for competing, because the kids really weren't competing here too much. I got seven kids to go to this most recent NAC, and that was a huge deal. My goals right now are getting the kids just to open up their worldview of competitive. Obviously, I want us to start doing well competitive, but that's going to take some time. Fencing, especially epee, it comes very slowly, or can come slowly.
It does take some time, but I want to put city fencing and Menaul on the map, and I think that I've already slightly done that, so I want to put a bigger dot on the map for Albuquerque. Because, yeah, you can see Albuquerque, you don't think fencing. That's what I want to do, is when you think about Albuquerque, “Oh, they have a good fencing team.” Definitely the goal in getting people to do well in competition, that going to universities and maybe international, or make world teams, obviously. That's always the goal. But yeah, to make Albuquerque – I know Albuquerque has a really good team.
There's a lot of times when you say like, I mean, not just in New Mexico specifically, but every city has a fencing club. Town has some level of fencing club, and you – but there's not, when we think of, I don't want to say, in the middle of nowhere town. I'm going to say, Moab. You don't think Moab is like, I'm sure they have a fencing club. I'm sure they do. But you don't think, oh, Moab has a really good fencing team. I want Albuquerque to first say, like, “Oh, yeah. They have a good fencing team. They have a good fencing club.” That's definitely the goal.
[0:36:36] CF: I think one club, one program can really make a huge difference if the resources are there. But we've seen it in the city as well, that there are elementary schools that have programs, there are summer programs, people are interested that you've actually started some of those programs. There's a developing interest in it. One thing I would love to see is that as we get fencing programs that are really strong here, that we can get other schools onboard in New Mexico, there's a club in Santa Fe, and that we can incorporate it into the state's athletic association. In a state like New Mexico doing things like that are easy. You just have to ask. You just have to say like, “Hey, we've got a couple of programs. We'd like to formalize this.”
Then being able to say like, “Hey, right now I'm the state champion of New Mexico in epee.” That will make a big difference in kids' college careers. I will though talk in New Mexico for one aspect, which is that it's not a California, it's not a New York, it's a lot easier to stand out on the stage in a place like New Mexico. There are smart people who are figuring that out. There are smart people who are saying, “All right. What's the SAT required to be a national merit scholar in New Mexico versus Massachusetts? What's the expectation to be a state level champion on this state versus that state?” There is also a strategic focus to being in New Mexico. Our kids are going to shine a lot brighter from an earlier standpoint.
[0:38:21] BW: That's great. Well, we're going to end it there, and I want to say thank you to both of you. We'll put a link to your website in the show notes of this episode, and just want to say, Courtney, Chris, thank you for your time today. I think it's clear that the pathway through fencing and the power of fencing is just so strong at Menaul and anywhere to set students up for success at college and beyond, and what's happening there at Menaul is a testament to this. Courtney, you yourself are as well. So thank you both so much, and good luck the rest of the year.
[0:38:55] CH: Thank you very much.
[0:38:56] CF: Thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:38:59] BW: Thanks for listening to First to 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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