Imagine coaching a 19-year-old NCAA fencer on Friday — then coaching a 50-year-old vet fencer on Saturday. That’s the world David Sierra lives in, and he’s discovered that coaching across generations doesn’t split his focus… it sharpens it. In this episode of First to 15, Bryan Wendell sits down with David — head men’s and women’s coach at Wagner College, veteran coach, longtime referee, club owner, and Education Manager for the US Fencing Coaches Association — to talk about the surprising overlap between NCAA and vet fencing. They discuss building a college program from the ground up, why adult fencers strengthen a club’s culture (and bottom line), what it’s like coaching at Veteran Worlds, and how passion, tempo, and tactical depth travel both directions between young fencers and veterans.
Guest: David Sierra
David Sierra is the head men’s and women’s fencing coach at Wagner College (NY), where he expanded the program from seven athletes to a co-ed squad of 31 and produced NCAA qualifiers early in the men’s program. He also coaches veteran fencers (40+), served as coach and team captain at the 2025 Veteran Worlds in Bahrain, is a longtime national referee, a certified fencing master, and the Education Manager for the US Fencing Coaches Association.
What we cover:
David’s entry into fencing via a Texas A&M PE class (and why he’s glad he didn’t choose “aerobic walking”)
How an injury ended his competitive career — and pushed him into coaching and refereeing
Building Wagner fencing: recruiting, culture, and growing a young NCAA program fast
“Better humans” as a coaching motto — and what that looks like day to day
Why veteran fencers matter to clubs: culture, feedback, community, staffing, and smart scheduling
Coaching vets vs coaching NCAA athletes: what’s different, and what’s surprisingly the same
Bahrain 2025: David’s first international coaching experience and the realities of coaching on the world stage
Why Veteran Worlds is a tougher jump for Americans (and how vets prepare without an international circuit)
Team format changes, fast team selection, and the challenge of coaching a relay team you just met
What USA Fencing can do better for vets — and why travel funding would be a game-changer
“Vet fencing is the soul of fencing”: tactical depth, tempo, and what younger fencers can learn
What keeps David motivated after losing a club and rebuilding in a new region
Rapid fire includes:
Favorite weapon (no surprises)
David’s “other lifetime” in science and the Human Genome Project
The coach who shaped his philosophy — and the best advice he ever received
How he reads the room before coaching
Motorcycles, sci-fi, cooking, and The Repair Shop
SEASON 2 EPISODE 24
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:01] BW: Imagine coaching a 19-year-old NCAA fencer on Friday and then a 50-year-old vet fencer on Saturday. That's a wide age gap, but you might notice that the passion and drive from both is just as intense. In this episode of First to 15, we're going to meet a talented coach who lives in both worlds of fencing, both college and veteran, and he's discovered that each side makes him better at coaching the other. Welcome to the show. I'm Bryan Wendell and our guest today is David Sierra, who's a coach who wears two hats in the fencing world and wears them quite well. He's the head men's and women's fencing coach at Wagner College in New York. He's now in his fourth season there.
He's expanded the Wagner program from a women's only team of just seven athletes to a co-ed squad of 31 fencers this year, and he's already produced NCAA championship qualifiers within the first two years of launching the men's program. It's a really impressive feat for a young program. If that's not enough, David also coaches veteran, which for those of you who don't know about fencing, those are what we call our adult fencers, ages 40 and up. He's coached veteran fencers for a long time and two of his Sabre fencers earned spots on team USA at the 2025 vet worlds in Bahrain, where David actually traveled as their coach, even was the team captain for the women's Sabre team squad.
Before all of that, David spent 16 years running a successful fencing club in Texas and now he started a new club on Staten Island, where he trains beginners of all ages. In addition to coaching athletes, he's also a certified fencing master and the education manager for the US Fencing Coaches Association. David, I don't know how you have time for this podcast, but we're glad you gave us an hour today. Thank you so much for joining us.
[0:01:41] DS: Thank you so much. It's good to be here. Yeah, when you said I wear two hats, I was like, if that's under counting it significantly.
[0:01:47] BW: Yeah, two, maybe in one hour, let's say that. Let's start by talking about your journey, how you got involved in fencing, how you ended up in coaching and your story of how you got to that point.
[0:02:01] DS: I'm really addressing pathway to the sport, when I was in high school. I didn't fence in high school. I didn't fence as a kid. That wasn't something was really available to people in Texas at that time. I was a freshman at Texas A&M, science major, and went to take a PE class. That time, a freshman, with last name Sierra, is getting around to be able to register. There's not a lot of courses and sections left. I had a choice between three sections of PE, advanced weightlifting, aerobic walking and beginning fencing. I've never spoken to anybody who said, “Oh, I would make a different choice, straight up, right?” That's how I –
[0:02:47] BW: The walking one, especially. I'm cracking up at that.
[0:02:50] DS: Right. Again, it's a PE course, right? For credit, right? That's how I get started in the PE class at Texas A&M. I loved it. It was great. It was awesome. It was fantastic. Within the first month or so, I joined the fencing club at Texas A&M to club sport there. Was there on that team for several years. I have wonderful friends that I am still in contact with, that we have a group chat, several of us, who we talk about everything like that. We were following together the Texas A&M's run to the championship that ended soon during, and should have we felt, but that's going to happen in football. That was how I got started in the sport and the club at Texas A&M. Then pursued it from there.
To be fair, a mid-level athlete at best. That would be the best way to describe it. When I moved to Dallas to go to graduate school, I started fencing in Dallas and had the opportunity to have really good coaching for the first time really in Sabre, in my career, and was doing fantastic. It’s summer nationals in, somewhere around the round of 16 or so, fell on the old copper strips and messed up my knee. That was the end of my competitive career. I was 23, 24 at the time. I was like, “Ah, okay. Well, that's it.” I got into volunteer coaching at the club I was teaching at and also started refereeing a little bit as well, too.
[0:04:20] BW: Another hat that you still wear.
[0:04:21] DS: Another hat that I wear, right? I've actually been a member of the National Referee cadre since 1998. I have worked some national tournament, almost every year since then. I think the year my kid was born, I didn't referee that year.
[0:04:36] BW: That's a fair excuse, but yeah.
[0:04:37] DS: Every other year, I've refereed at least one national tournament. Many of those years, I've refereed all of them. I've stepped back a bit from that now as deeply as involved, but that was really my first big thing that I did in fencing was being a referee, and then a volunteer coach. Then I had an opportunity. There was a small rec program on the far side of the DFW Metroplex over in a summer over at Fort Worth, Northridge and Hills, where they had a rec program at the rec center that they just lost their coach. A friend of mine put me in contact with them. It's like, “Hey, they need someone to come teach a class a couple of times a week.”
I was coaching up in Grapevine, north of there, with some really good friends, Jim Carpenter, who had recent retired from Stevens. He and I were coaching in Grapevine together at the time and this opportunity. I was like, “Jim, should I do this? I don't know if I'm ready for my own program.” He was like, “Do it. There's no time you're ever not ready. But go.” I was like, okay. So, I did it. That program then grew. Twice, we can at rec center to a few years later, we had to run space and moved to another space. Then in January 2019, we signed a 10-year lease on what was going to be our permanent home and a wonderful, fantastic place. 10 strips, locker rooms, workout facility, and then 10 months later, another world ended.
[0:06:08] BW: Not the ideal time for a fencing club to be open. You couldn't have known.
[0:06:13] DS: We couldn’t know, right? We lost the club. I've since processed that. It took a while.
[0:06:16] BW: Yeah, of course. Yeah, sure, sure.
[0:06:19] DS: Then moved up to here to Tri-State area. Worked at a couple of clubs around the area, then had the opportunity to start coaching at Wagner. I did. There's a lot in between all of that. We can touch on some of that. Again, how I started coaching in veterans. Now that process, that happened, but yes. That's the broad outline.
[0:06:38] BW: Yeah. That's helpful to have that picture. I want to get into the vet side in a little bit. Let's talk about Wagner since you ended there and ended your story there. Your story continues there, I should say. You essentially built this college program from the ground up. What was that experience like, growing a team at the NCAA level?
[0:07:01] DS: It's been one of the most rewarding things I've done in my life, straight up. When I started here, the program was about six years old and had been run by graduate students at that time. They had started the program. Every two years, there was a new program, new coach. There had been a professor on campus who had – his name was Brian Palestis. He had fenced at Princeton back in the day. He helped push the program going. Then he got cancer, died the first year of the program. Our home mate is named after Brian Palestis. That's this weekend, actually, the 1st of February is actually the 10th anniversary of the program. We're very excited about that.
I was brought in by the athletic director to be the first professional coach of the program. When I came in, I was like, look, I think this program has a lot of potential, a lot of serious potential to do a lot of really good things here and also be a benefit to the college. Because let's be frank, that's why programs like fencing exist in athletic departments is to benefit the college.
[0:08:09] BW: Right. You got to bring in those applications, high-quality student athletes. We know the story for sure.
[0:08:15] DS: It's all about the dollars. That's just straight up. I was like, “Yeah, but I can do that.” He was like, “How many people you think you can bring in?” I'm like, “More than you think we – I think my number is a lot higher than your number is.” He was like, “Oh?” I was like, “Okay. Give me a men's program and I will have 30 people in three years.” He was like, “You're joking.” I was like, “I promise you. If I did not have that –”
[0:08:38] BW: You were starting from where? Just so we get a sense of how much you –
[0:08:41] DS: Right. There were seven women on the team. That's what started. I was like, “Give me three years, and I'll have 30 people in a men's program.” He was like, “Okay. Let's run with it.” I was like, “Sure.” So, we did. First thing I did went out is I went out and recruited some walk on fencers and to help fill out, to have at least full squads on the on the program. Found a couple people who had nobody with fencing experience, but some – they've been athletes in their sports. One of them had done stage combat. There were just some different pieces and was really targeting – I'm looking not for athletes. I'm looking for culture, because that's what I knew I had to build first. Build the culture. Who are the people? Because these are the first group that I was going to have direct contact with. I'm selecting these walk-ons. It went on from there.
Then that first year, I was here, I was recruiting for our men's team. The first year of the men's team. We started again. The goal was to have a full squad, nine, straight up. We did nine. We did. We had 10, actually. So, it was good. We had an NCAA qualifier the first year of the men's program. I don't know if that's ever happened in any of the program, at least no one – when that happened, everybody was telling, “I think you're the first one that's ever done that.” I was like, and again, the athlete is incredible. Flavio is just absolutely amazing. Everybody who watches him when he fences, we call it dinner in a show. The guy puts on a show. It's amazing. He's fantastic.
It was also the support system behind him, and the other athletes that we brought on, and the culture we were building. Then he repeated it again the next year. Again, adding more. We had this incremental building over year by year, adding athletes, of course, adding more athletes to the women's side as well too, because there are people who were graduating and getting them in. Just developing and programming. Now I've got 30 athletes. I've got three assistant coaches. We're creating more for next year, more athletes for next year. I'm graduating the first group of people that were here with me the first year. There's three young women that are graduating this year that I'm really close to.
It's going to be really tough to see them go. We've had some moments where we've all shared that. Oh, my gosh. Look where we look where it is now from where it started four years ago. It's fantastic. I love it here. I love what I do as a college coach. I love the lives that I change. Our motto on the team is, I'm trying to build better humans. That's the goal, right? Yes, athletic success is great. Yes, all these other stuff is wonderful. But really, I'm a parent as well, too, and my child played sports and did other things. The goal, as parents, we put our children in sports. They get experiences and they learn stuff about themselves and they encounter things outside their every day. They have experiences that help them develop the whole list of things of resilience and competitiveness and critical thinking skills and etc., etc., etc. But really comes down to, to be a better human. That's what we do here, that we make better humans.
I talk to the parents of kids that we’re recruiting. I tell them, “Look, you're going to hand over your most prized possession to me for four years. I want to give it back to you in better shape than it came to me. That's really the end goal.” Wagner as an institution is supportive of that extremely. The big tagline here is Wagner cares. The staff, the professors really care and are invested in the long-term success of our student athletes. Not just our student athletes, but the entire student population.
Now, there are some sorts of advantages that we have. We're division one, so I can give athletic scholarships. That's awesome. We're New York City. People want to come to New York City, especially foreign athletes. I've got 11 countries on my team. It's amazing. It's incredible. It's fantastic. From all over the world. I think 10 different states in the United States as well, too. It's a very diverse team. They really are coming from very different places, but they come together and make something better than the sum of their parts, which is the definition of a team.
[0:13:31] BW: Yeah. One plus one equals 30 around for many.
[0:13:34] DS: Sometimes.
[0:13:37] BW: I love that. I understand why it would be so rewarding to coach at the college level. You talked about some of the student athletes who are graduating this year, and you've gotten to work with them for four years. Let's switch gears to the other side of the age spectrum. We talked in the intro about how you coach veteran fencers, or adult fencers. Why do you make time in your schedule for that? What's rewarding about it? How did you get involved there?
[0:14:02] DS: Well, honestly, my wife. It started with her, to be to be fair.
[0:14:07] BW: She was one of the ones who we referenced in the beginning that you coached at in Bahrain, Kate Sierra. Great Sabre –
[0:14:12] DS: Right. She took seventh in her first vet world, vet 50s. That was incredible. It's not just her, right? She started the fencing in the recreation center program. She was in my second beginner class at the rec center way back, when in North Virgin Hills. What I noticed very, very quickly was having her in that beginner class an adult in that class being around the other, it brought down the level of crazy a little bit.
[0:14:48] BW: Interesting.
[0:14:50] DS: Just turned the Rio stat down, just a smidge. I was like, we got a few other adults. I was like, “Oh. Well, this is good.” Some of them were parents of kids that fenced as well too, or in the program. Others fenced on their own. Just want to come in. Always around there, but they started getting this core group over there. Then another one of the vets in the program, her name is Lee Altman. She also fenced in Bahrain. She was part of that initial group at the recreation center. Her son fenced. He was a good kid. I mean, he was nice, tall, young Sabre fencer, and he stopped, right? Actually, her daughter fenced as well, too, when I think about it. All three of them were fencing. After three or four years, the kids were getting into the end of high school and they have other interests and they moved on, but she stuck with it. Then we had other vets coming in, right?
One of the things that I quickly noticed, first of all, was again, that tamping down the Rio stat of the crazy, helped a lot. Also, they brought skills of their own to the club that were fantastic. A couple of my vets started being assistant coaches. Lee ended up being certified as a Prevo. Kate also got certified as a Prevo. We had other adults that ended up being certified as coaches as well, too. Other vets worked as armorers. Other vets worked as just general ambassadors of the club. It was really a great, great group of people.
Yes, we had the kids, but we also had the adults. They all at times used resources and things at different times than the kids. Now, I'm making money on an unused space for a time when the kids aren't going to be using it and the adults are.
[0:16:46] BW: Smart. It was a business decision as well. That's very smart. Yeah.
[0:16:50] DS: Then, also realizing things like, adults think about things differently, and they're critical, in a good way. If something doesn't makes sense to them, they're going to tell you straight up. If you're doing something as a coach and they're like, “That doesn't make any sense,” they're going to tell you and they're going to help you figure it out. They're going to make you a better coach, because of that.
[0:17:13] BW: Whereas, a teenager might be like, “Well, this is the coach. I don't want to question them and whatever they say goes.” The 40 or 50-year-old might say, “Hey, can you explain that in a different way? Because that's not clicking for me.”
[0:17:27] DS: Especially if it's a teenager you've had since they were 10, or eight. That's coach, that's maestro. I mean, no. But an adult, they're going to tell you right away. Then, so those relationships, you build up over time. Also, the adults, again, we lost a club in Texas, but they were with us for even longer than any of the kids were, because the kids turn 18, they graduate, go away. Lee, again, an example, I'm still her coach. I've moved on. I don't live in Texas anymore, but we get together. She flies up here a couple of times a year. We give some lessons. I give her lessons right before the NAC, or in Bahrain, or wherever we're going and get going.
Then again, Kate, again, was part of that process. The two of them are really good friends. They're again, they're part of a veteran women's Sabre team that fences at NACs, and they've been together, I think, for seven years now. They've been fencing the same group of women, fencing together on team. That's awesome and amazing. I've got to be peripherally part of that. I coach that team, but that is an athlete run team, straight up. I've also, over the years, had the opportunity to work with other vets. When I moved up here to the tri-state area, some vets in epee really helped me develop some of my epee skills as a coach. That was great, which came in very useful when I became an NCAA coach, because I needed to start giving epee lessons and foil lessons. Having, again, that ability to be able to give a lesson to an adult and say, “Does this make sense?” They'll tell you straight up, “That makes sense. It doesn't make sense.” Very, very useful.
At the same time, that also helps with the NCAA team. Because if you think about it, these kids are at that precipice of becoming adults. They're not quite kids. They're not quite adults yet, but they're in that transition process. A big part of my job as an NCAA coach to help, again, make better humans, right? Helping with that transition process. Being able to know how to coach an adult coach, excuse me, being able to know how to coach an adult makes all the help in the world. Because I know where I want to be with them. I know what that relationship needs to look like when we're done. I can then turn them over to somebody else and say, “Hey, you have a fully formed adult fencer here. Go at it.”
[0:19:58] BW: Given all your experience coaching at so many different levels, I'd be curious to know how you would respond to a club owner who's saying, “We're doing just fine with focusing on youth fencing. We've thought about offering an adult program, but we're maybe not ready to do that.” Both on the community aspect side and the business side, why are adult fencers so important for a club's culture? You did mention one thing from the business side, which is very practical and I hadn't thought of, which is they'll come fence at times when the kids won't. There's one. But what are some other ways that they really enrich a club?
[0:20:35] DS: A big part of it also is culture, right? The adults will help you with that culture. They help build that culture. A lot of times, adults have, again, contacts in ways that you don't have access to. They know people, right? Again, adults, they will give you that feedback if something is not making sense. They'll help you make your program better. Then finally, again, coaches are a rare resource these days. If you can take someone and train someone to teach a beginner class, well, you're off giving lessons to whatever. Man, talk about valuable, talk about time, right? Saying.
[0:21:16] BW: I want to get into Bahrain a little bit more. You had the opportunity to coach at the vet worlds in Bahrain, as we mentioned. You've mentioned a couple of your great women, Sabre athletes, one of them happens to be your wife. You served as their coach and team captain. I mean, what was that experience like? You're halfway around the world and you’re coaching Team USA at the highest level of that fencing.
[0:21:38] DS: It was incredible. There's no other way to describe it. My first international experience as a coach. It couldn't have been more positive. Both the athletes, the other coaches that were there, we had a great relationship. At one point, I'm giving a warm-up lesson to – it wasn't even Lee or Kate. It was one of the other women on the team. I realized that German, Italian and French coaches are all watching me as it's just going down. I'm like, okay. No pressure here, right?
[0:22:09] BW: Let's see what this American has got. Yeah.
[0:22:12] DS: This guy we've never seen before. This guy. French coach comes up to me, who's like, this guy is a dude. He's been around forever. He coaches at Racing Club in Paris, right? After he's just, “Not bad. Pretty good going.” I'm like, “Okay. Yeah. Okay, sure.”
[0:22:28] BW: From a French coach, that could be the highest praise you might get, right?
[0:22:31] DS: Right. That's about as high as it gets. I wouldn't say I have a unique style. I have a well-developed style. I know what I want out of my athletes. I know how I want to communicate with my athletes. It's not so much that I pick and choose from material. I'm very conscious, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how I want my system to look and how I want to interact with my athletes. I would say, my coaching philosophy is definitely athlete centered. I really want my athletes to feel comfortable. I want them to drive the process. Again, that's goes back. That's how you work with adults as well, too. Also, how you should be working with NCAA professors as well at the same time, because they're on that pathway. You're not typically teaching them out of fence. You're helping to improve their fencing.
Being in Bahrain, getting to coach the team is seeing, like you watch a world cup, or world championships on TV and you see how it's going and like this. Then no, it's very different when you're in the middle of it, right? Then you find the call room and you got to go, when can you give a lesson? When can you not give a lesson? That's a important question. Where can you do it? How do you interact with the referees? How do you interact with the other coaches from the other countries?
Again, everybody there was so welcoming. I had a great time, and the athletes would get to work with there were just fantastic. I mean, it's the cream of the crop of US women's Sabre, veteran women's Sabre.
[0:24:04] BW: And you're getting to see like, one thing that I love about the vet world specifically is that this is the only time that these vet athletes fence against athletes from other countries, right? A World Cup circuit. You might see them nine or 10 times, but or is that true? I see you saying –
[0:24:21] DS: Well, that's true for the Americans. It's not true for the Europeans. They have their own international circuit, right?
[0:24:29] BW: This is maybe a disadvantage for us then.
[0:24:32] DS: It's a big disadvantage for us.
[0:24:33] BW: Got it. Can you elaborate on that? What is that like? Because you go to summer nationals, which is the last domestic tournament before vet worlds and you see the vet fencing there. Then you see who the team is going to be and you've got three months to prepare for October, and in this case, November, and vet worlds. What is that time used for? How can you prepare someone to compete against athletes that they've never seen?
[0:24:58] DS: Boy, it was challenging. That's for sure. Part of it was again, working with vet athletes is in many cases, about, there's two major things you always have to take into consideration. Number one, injury prevention.
[0:25:12] BW: Sure.
[0:25:13] DS: It's high on the list.
[0:25:14] BW: We've seen some athletes drop out, right?
[0:25:15] DS: By the way, that's NCAA as well, too. Injury prevention, straight up there. But the other one is mental confidence. Making sure they feel comfortable. As a coach, then what you're doing is you're simulating stuff. You're going to try and give them lessons with different things. Kate, I mean, all credit to her, she had no bouting partners. Our club was just getting started. She had nobody to fence with. Her preparation for Bahrain consisted of taking lessons with me and going to a couple of tournaments. That was it. She did that and did amazing with that.
We had a lot of chats. We did a lot of video. We watched different ventures. We had a couple of training groups we got together. There was big one up in Boston, at Zeta, that we held in August. That was fantastic.
[0:26:10] BW: A camp. I forgot about that. Yeah, that's awesome.
[0:26:13] DS: Yup. A lot of the veteran women from the United States came together there, including people who had been on teams before, but were not part of the team that year. They helped provide information about what the experience is like to those fencers. Then we had another training camp at my club, just getting started in October-ish, somewhere around there. Then we did some more competition. The tri-state vet cup that Michael Bacon puts on is fantastic. It really helped with that process. Really was the only competition that Kate was getting at that time. That was a great thing.
[0:26:45] BW: Yeah, that’s tricky.
[0:26:47] DS: She was able to do that. Lee also came up for both of those things and helped train at both of those. Then packed our bags and flew to Bahrain.
[0:26:56] BW: And you got a plane. Yeah.
[0:26:57] DS: Tried to be rested when we got there and did our best.
[0:27:02] BW: The individual event takes place and then the team event after that. The team is constructed based on the results from the individual event, right? Which is yet another wrinkle, because if you're coaching at junior in cadet worlds, for example, you know your team for months. Whereas, you knew your team for 24 hours, less. Explain how the team is constructed and what the challenges you faced were.
[0:27:28] DS: Also, also this year it was different, because this was the first year they added the 40s in. Now we had two teams, right? I was coaching the 40-50 combination group. Another coach was coaching the 60-70 combination group.
[0:27:44] BW: The grand vets, right? The 60-70s. Yeah.
[0:27:46] DS: We had the vets and the grand vets. Anyway, so before is where we had a weird format. Now it is a 45 touch relay, which we know how to do, because we have our vet teams that we do here at our NACs, which are great preparation for this, because we know how
to fence at these level, and fence and stuff. It helped. But again, wrinkle, because now there's five members of the team, not four. Because you get two substitutions, not just one. There's some weird rules that were put in place. I don't know if they're going to continue or not. Don't know how this is going to work. For last year, it was. Yeah, I had to have at least one member of the 50 squad in every group of three bouts, every rotation.
[0:28:33] BW: Okay. You couldn't just fence all 40s.
[0:28:36] DS: You couldn't fence all 40s.
[0:28:37] BW: Yeah, which makes sense.
[0:28:39] DS: In many ways, our 50s were stronger than our 40s.
[0:28:43] BW: You can't even just look at the age anyway.
[0:28:46] DS: Right. They constructed the team. Basically, what they did was they took the two people from each age group who had the highest finishing individuals. Then they took the next person who had the highest individual finish between 40s and 50s.
[0:28:59] BW: Got it. Got it. That seems fair.
[0:29:02] DS: Again, there's all sorts of ways you could construct that problem and that seems to be the best way to do it. That's how Team USA decided to do it.
[0:29:12] BW: As a result, you don't know your team until pretty late in the process. Then it's like, “Here you go, coach. Good luck.”
[0:29:17] DS: Well, but more than that, right? The 50s fenced on day one, the 40s fenced on day two. We knew who the two 50s were going to be. We knew the two of them who were going to be and we didn't know who the other three members were going to be until the end of the 40 competition. We knew halfway through that that only two 40s were going to be the next highest person in the 50, had a higher result than anybody. We can do that person. But still, again, so that evening, myself and Darius Wei who I asked to be the assistant coach with me, was like, “Hey.” We sat down and we mapped out who every single person that was on the squad fenced, also, who did people that weren't on the squad, who did they fenced and who we think is going to be under the teams and how do we think these matchups were going to go.
We played a lot of scenarios in our head about what our substitution patterns were going to look like, and how we're going to do that. Then we came out first round against Great Britain. Did pretty well. Fenced the different groups. Came against Germany. Man, the German women veterans Sabre, 40s in particular were really strong. They ended up winning the whole thing. We didn't have an answer for that, unfortunately. They were very, very tough. Then we were in the bronze medal bout against France. Unfortunately, we lost that. It was a very, very close match. A heartbreaker to lose.
I got to give credit to all the women on the team. They fenced very, very hard and they really came together as a unit for the most part. Another 24 hours of preparation would have been awesome.
[0:30:59] BW: Sure. Yeah.
[0:31:02] DS: Just, let's have dinner together, kind of a thing.
[0:31:04] BW: Right.
[0:31:07] DS: We did our best and it was great. We'll see if that format continues in the future. It was a lot of fun. It was very different format.
[0:31:12] BW: And a great experience, too. I want to ask, given that you're so close with the vet community. I want to ask a bigger picture question and this is somewhat selfish to ask as I work for USA Fencing, but is USA Fencing and the large offensive community doing enough to support vet fencers? What more could we be doing to help the vet fencing community? I mean, we put on tournaments. Some say, the tournament should be offered at different times. You're never going to find the right time. But we send the team to vet worlds, obviously, and make sure they're well equipped there. What more could USA Fencing do for this important community?
[0:31:50] DS: I think, obviously, it's always a question of resources.
[0:31:53] BW: Sure, sure.
[0:31:54] DS: Right. Again, being an NCAA coach, resource management is at the top of my list.
[0:31:59] BW: You get it. Yeah, exactly.
[0:32:00] DS: I get that on a visceral level. I think if there was going to be one thing that would make the absolute difference, it would be for the team to be funded to go. So, that you're not having to pay for at least for your own travel and hotel to go over to compete for Team USA. If we could do that, that would help. That would help a lot. I think the vet NACs where I run – I think, actually, all the NACs are run way better than they used to be. The level of professionalism, the level of care put into the event organization these days is certainly leagues above where it was when I was fencing, that's for sure. It's gotten even better and all credit to the team that Phil Andrews put together with that, because it's been getting better and better every single year.
I think from a competition standpoint, we're doing well. There's complaints about referees and do they give enough care to vets for the most part? At least my experience has been, yes, the referees do give the care and attention to vets. Nuances between “the vet game and the div one game,” it's slower for one. I mean, that's just the – It's a richer game, though. It's a tactically deeper game, I feel. I think a lot of coaches would agree with that. Especially the ones that have experienced coaching and events. Because it's just a little bit slower, you get a richer, deeper tactical progression in the weapon that is really cool. It's a lot of fun. It's very cerebral. It can get really cerebral in the way that we, a lot of times we think about, well, this is what fencing is. Yes. I, I think a lot of times vet fencing is the soul of fencing, so to speak. I remember way back my, my first fencing master, Gerard Poujardieu, late coach from Texas, he had a sign in his wall that says “Fencing takes two lifetimes to master.”
[0:33:56] BW: I love that.
[0:33:58] DS: He always said, “By the time you are old enough to understand what you're doing, you're physically capable of doing any more.”
[0:34:07] BW: It seems like, the younger fencers could learn that slow down, be a little bit richer and deeper in your fencing, but I'd love to know what could vet fencers learn from some of the younger fencers that you work with? Is there something that you're seeing from your student athletes at Wagner, for example, that you're like, “Oh, this is cool. This is taking fencing in a new direction. I'm going to tell my wife and my other people that I work with at the veteran level about this”?
[0:34:34] DS: Oh, absolutely. For sure. It goes both ways. The thing that the NCAA athletes bring is passion. They love what they do. They have a passion for the sport. They have this intensity of this drive at – I mean, they're getting here for 6.30 AM practice. You have to really enjoy what you're doing if you're going to do that, right? They do. They bring that. They do, again, at least for my experience, the efforts that I work with, because of that richness of the background that coming from all over the world, the different styles, they do some stuff. It's like, “Ooh. Well, that's cool. Show me how you did that, right? How did your coach teach you how to do that? Or did your coach teach you how to do that?” You figured that out on your own.
If so, even better, let's figure out how to make it even – where do we go from there? I have had some things, where I've played with some stuff that I've seen. Okay, I see you doing this. I see this temple that you're bringing. How do I translate that into the vet world? I've played some stuff, developed the system over the years of how to train slow and fast work. What does that actually mean? I have some drills that I do with gloves and droppings and how to feel the timing of that that I got perfected with my athlete, my NCAA team then brought back to my vets and they love it. Again, figuring out how to make change size of footwork. What do you do in certain situations? There's definitely bi-play boats –
[0:36:09] BW: It's a two-way street. That's great. Okay, one more question in the main portion and then we're going to get into our rapid fire round. You have so much different diverse experiences in fencing. We talked about all the hats that you wear, but what keeps you motivated? What keeps you coming back? You live and breathe fencing. What keeps you doing it day after day?
[0:36:30] DS: Well, it goes back to that primary experiences when I started fencing on my club at Texas A&M, and the friends that I made there. It gave me a place. The sport gave me a place to belong and a place to be. When things went bad in my life, so I got laid off for my job as research scientist, when I lost my club, there was always that community of fencing. They were like, “It's going to be okay.” I get a phone call. “Hey, I'm thinking about you. Hey, you’re doing okay.” My friends that I made refereeing, that now a lot of us are off doing other things, or they're coaching and I'm coaching and I'm across the strip from them and that's fun, too. It's really that group of people. The sport has given me so much over the years that I can't help but to want to raise the next generation in the sport to appreciate it the way I do.
[0:37:29] BW: Yeah. I think that's beautifully said, and it's been fun watching you. Let's get into our rapid fire round. This is the quick lightning round. Short answer. I'm not going to say one or two words, but short answers here. Number one. I thought I knew the answer to this one coming in, but then you mentioned that you've also been as a college coach coaching epee and foil. What is your favorite fencing weapon? Are you able to –
[0:37:55] DS: It’s Sabre. I mean, come on. I mean, of course. It's absolutely Sabre.
[0:37:58] BW: That would have been my guess. I didn't know if you had been taken to the other side.
[0:38:02] DS: Although, again, not go – I really like epee. I really like coaching good epee. It's a lot of fun. There is some really cool cross-contamination, for lack of better word, between the two.
[0:38:13] BW: Yeah, that's awesome. Okay, so if you weren't coaching fencing for whatever reason, what career would you say yourself doing instead?
[0:38:21] DS: Well, I was originally a research scientist. I mean, I did my graduate work at UT Southwestern Medical Center. I have a graduate degree and some molecular biology. I did my did my graduate work as part of the Human Genome Project. So, yeah. I didn’t buy informatics.
[0:38:36] BW: That's so cool.
[0:38:37] DS: Yeah, that was another lifetime. I was a college professor. I taught at the community college.
[0:38:42] BW: That's great. Okay, who is a fencer, or a coach that really inspires you? Obviously, there's going to be dozens, but first one that maybe comes to mind, or that you want to shout out.
[0:38:53] DS: It's got Gerard Poujardieu, my first coach. My real life first fencing master in San Antonio. When I told him that I would start up my own club, and he was dying of cancer at the time. He said to me, “Remember, it's always about the athletes. It's never about you. If you make it about the kids, you'll do well. If you ever start to make it about yourself, then take a step back.” I've really tried to live up to that. I'd like to think he'd be proud of me. I'd like to think, he'd be happy with where I ended up in what I'm doing. Dr. Pepper, raising a glass of Dr. Pepper to him.
[0:39:38] BW: Yeah, that's awesome. How about a pre-competition ritual, or something that you like to do to get yourself ready to coach? We know some fencers do their pre-competition rituals. I'm sure your team at Wagner does that. How about you from a coaching perspective?
[0:39:56] DS: I like to take a minute and just sit down, or stand if I can, whatever, and look around the room and take the pulse. What's the energy? Is it high? Is it low? Who's refereeing? Who's fencing? What's the warmth look like? Where are we going? Does it seem like we're running on time, like we’re running behind? Do we need to inject energy into my athlete? Do we need to pull some energy away from them? What are their feelings? How is that all processed? Go and really take it outside myself. It's not me. It's them. What do they need today? I have to very carefully look at that and trying to get a feel for that.
[0:40:35] BW: That's cool. Yeah, because as the coach, you can see the big picture, the zoomed-out view that certainly, an individual athlete focused on their next bout can't see. That's really well said. Okay, last one. You spend so much time with fencing. What do you do when you're off duty? What are some ways you like to relax, or recharge that has nothing to do with fencing?
[0:40:57] DS: I like to ride my motorcycle.
[0:40:58] BW: Oh, nice.
[0:41:00] DS: My motorcycle, when I can. Staten Island isn't a great place to do that, unfortunately.
[0:41:03] BW: Fair. Fair.
[0:41:05] DS: But when I cross the bridge and go to New Jersey with that occasionally. I also like to read. I read science fiction, my favorite genre. Then my wife and I have recently discovered weird reality TV for the back of their – but not the weird stuff. There’s this show called The Repair Shop. Have you heard of this?
[0:41:24] BW: No, I don't know that one.
[0:41:25] DS: Oh, my God. It is the most chill. It's this group in England where basically, they take and the repair sentimental treasures of people.
[0:41:34] BW: Cool. It's one with a story, right?
[0:41:36] DS: It is so chill. You come to practice, you put it on and you just take this deep breath and you just let everything go, because it's just really cool. We watch cooking shows, too. Just fun. I like to cook.
[0:41:50] BW: That's cool. Well, this has been really fun. I know we've been chatting at NACs for a while, and to get all of some of our conversations and pieces here and there “on the record, on the podcast” has been a real treat. David Sierra, thank you so much for taking the time. It's a real inspiration to see all that you've done. To our listeners, thanks for checking this out. If you want to learn more about David's team, check out Wagner on all the different channels, websites, socials and everything. Be sure to spread the word about our podcast as well, so more people can hear about great people in our fencing community like David. Thank you so much for your time. I guess, we'll see you at the next one.
[0:42:28] DS: Thanks very much. It was a pleasure to be here. I mean, in fact, yeah, we've got the February NAC with the first veteran NAC of this season in a couple of weeks.
[0:42:34] BW: It's going to be exciting.
[0:42:35] DS: Let's do it.
[0:42:36] BW: Cool. Thanks.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:42:37] 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.
[END]