Our guest today is Eric Momberg, Head Coach of the fencing team at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.
In this episode of First to 15, we're joined by Eric Momberg, head coach of the fencing team at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis.
Before Eric joined the Vikings of NCAA’s Division III, he was an assistant coach for the women's team at Northwestern University, where he earned Coach of the Year honors and led the Wildcats to two conference championships.
Before that, he coached fencers to more than 60 medals at North American Cups, also known as NACs. It's safe to say, he's found coaching success at all levels of fencing. Today, we're going to ask Eric about his own story about collegiate fencing, of course, and what juniors and cadets need to know about the college recruiting process.
EPISODE 13
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:01] BW: Hello, and welcome to First to 15, the official podcast of USA Fencing. I'm your host, Bryan Wendell. In this show, you're going to hear from some of the most inspiring, interesting and insanely talented people in the sport we all love. First to 15 is for anyone in the fencing community, and even for those just checking out fencing to see what it's all about. Whether you're an Olympian, or Paralympian, a newcomer, a seasoned veteran, a fencing parent, a fan, or anyone else in this wonderful community, this podcast is for you. With that, let's get to today's episode. Enjoy.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:40] BW: Our guest today is Eric Momberg, Head Coach of the fencing team at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Before Eric joined the Vikings of NCAA’s Division Three, he was an assistant coach for the women's team at Northwestern University, where he earned Coach of the Year honors and led the Wildcats to two conference championships. Before that, he coached fencers to more than 60 medals at North American Cups, also known as NACs. It's safe to say, he's found coaching success at all levels of fencing. Today, we're going to ask Eric about his own story about collegiate fencing, of course, and what juniors and cadettes need to know about the college recruiting process. Hey, Eric, welcome to the podcast.
[0:01:19] EM: Thanks for having me on.
[0:01:20] BW: Before we talk about college fencing, I'd love to hear your own fencing story, about your own journey. Can you tell us how long you've been involved in fencing and when you made that move into that successful coaching career that we talked about in the intro?
[0:01:34] EM: Yeah, that's an interesting question. I'm actually an abnormal story in that regard. I started fencing at 16-years-old in a YMCA. It was a one day a week sort of a thing. I got really into it and kept going and started looking for different opportunities to fence. I started creating groups of people that wanted to do drills and things and extending it beyond the one day a week. We would travel to tournaments, learn from other coaches, ask them for drills, and then come back and rent gym space and try the drills ourselves.
We were constantly working in this collaborative phase to build up each other's fencing and coaching ourselves. There was always a coaching component to my fencing, because I was trying to figure out how to coach myself. Then as that progressed and became more successful, I ended up being the go-to guy to coach some of the kids in the club and things like that. It wasn't until after college that I made my push for high-level fencing.
I moved, joined another club, got some coaching on my own. That was my competitive career was through my adulthood. I didn't stop until 27. It was initially meant to be a break between college and grad school, by the time I got that I was 27 and working as a PE teacher to pay for all my fencing.
[0:02:58] BW: Sure.
[0:02:59] EM: Then I had fencing experience, PE teaching experience. In college, I was in outdoor education, and the whole resume looked a whole lot more like coach than grad school by the time I was in. The transition just happened on its own.
[0:03:12] BW: Then you found success in college coaching. What is it about the collegiate coaching, I guess, role that keeps you coming back year after year?
[0:03:23] EM: The environment in NCAA fencing is unique, I think. I've coached at this point at every level from Y10 up to the Senior World Championships. I would say, still, in a world level coaching is fun and amazing experience. In NCAA, there are a couple of things that we get to do very consistently, that are very satisfying as a coach. When you're looking at club coaching, you have a whole bunch of different age ranges, different ability levels, all these things happening at once. Not everybody is on the same schedule.
In your club, you could have – you've got a Y10 event this weekend, you have that fencers. You have team one fencers, then you’ve got one world cup in there. The ability to really design a season is very, very difficult. Man, it's one of the skills of high-level coaching that we don't get to exercise very much in that environment. In NCAA, we have one group all of a similar age range, all heading towards a similar goal. You have these aspects of creating team of season periodization, of lesson plans that have a developmental curve to them, of projecting someone's growth path out over three and four years. That part is intellectually interesting.
Then you have the team camaraderie aspect, because everything we do in season is by team. We're going to be on two or three strips with two to three fencers fencing at one time. I mean, if you have a team of 23 to 35 average team sizes, that's three people fencing and 30 people cheering and supporting each other and communicating. That's a great energy. I think, those two things, just that team energy and the clarity and organization to the season, make it really appealing. As well as the collegial mentality between the coaches, because all meets are invitationals. It's not you pay and show up. You have to get invited, which means you have to behave well to get invited back. There's a good amount of professionalism as well, that makes it a pleasant environment.
[0:05:36] BW: That's great. The collaborative piece is something that I think you embody, because you're willing to share your expertise and your understanding of what it takes to get into some of these collegiate fencing programs and thrive there. The reason I bring that up is at our summer nationals in Minneapolis, you were part of something called College Day, hosted by USA Fencing. Anybody interested in fencing could show up, watch a presentation, get their questions answered.
I think, some people maybe skeptically might have assumed there would be a dozen people there, but hundreds showed up. You were saying earlier that there were not enough chairs even, so, that's a good sign. What did that kind of event, what did that tell you about the interest within our community in fencing at the collegiate level?
[0:06:22] EM: I think, there's a lot of interest at the collegiate level in fencing. Not only in NCAA, but also in club. We have a large number of people who finish their high school career and don't feel like they're done, and who want to continue to push themselves. I think, my personal philosophy is that sports shouldn't be a growth vehicle for life, right? We look at fencing, NCAA fencing as part of your education. It's going to push you in different ways. It's going to give you skills that help you develop as a human being and as a teammate. Those things will translate into your life. How do you handle job pressure? How do you handle working with other people? How do you handle goals and deadlines? These are all skills that people need in the workplace.
Being an NCAA athlete looks great on a resume after you're done with college. There are some people that are coming at it from that route. There are some people that are coming at it from the college admissions route. There are some people that just still have a love of it and aren't done. Those are all paths into college. I think, there's a lot of interest. I think as we are able to clarify information around recruiting, when I look at people and say, “Oh, there are 46 NCAA fencing schools.” They go, “How many?” 46, right, because people are thinking, oh, 20, 15, 10.
As we can clarify some of the recruiting information, and the goal of all of us in NCAA should be to fill all of the programs. We should be filling each other's programs, so that we all have people to work with and compete against. Hopefully, once that is all maxed out, then other schools see opportunities for recruitment. Fencers tend to be high-academic achieving individuals. It's a wonderful sport, especially for small liberal arts schools, that are looking to diversify their experience and yet, high-performing individuals. Fencers tend to fit that niche. I think as we see this communication gap gets short up between NCAA, USFA, getting information across to the parents, we're going to see more success in both organizations, and an ability for NCAA fencing to grow a little bit.
[0:08:41] BW: Now, let's clear up some of those misconceptions that you alluded to. Because, specifically with recruiting, it's maybe not as simple as some people might think, right? A coach can't just contact any fencer at any time. There's rules to all this. From a high level, because we could definitely talk about this for hours, what are some of the recruiting rules that families should know if they're thinking of taking that step?
[0:09:04] EM: From a rules perspective, you should know that coaches, the division one coaches cannot talk to you until your junior year of high school. The division three coaches can talk to you your sophomore year. Sometimes, people will reach out really early, freshman year of high school or something, and they'll get a very short response. “Thank you very much for your interest. I'm sorry, I can't talk with you right now.” Don't take that the wrong way. We cannot talk to you at certain points.
[0:09:34] BW: Right. There's rules that you have to follow.
[0:09:37] EM: Understanding that fencing is one combined sport in NCAA. Once you're into the fencing part of fencing, we do not separate divisions. We don't really even talk about it. We have separated out a few awards. There are now 73 awards that are great and recognize some of the smaller and developing programs, which is really helpful. We all compete against each other. The people come into it sometimes thinking that, “Oh, if I talk to a D3 school, that means I'm going to just fence other D3 schools and it's going to be like club.” That's not the case at all.
Most of the D3 programs that are doing well are training a similar number of hours and have their training schedules and competition schedules set up in a very similar manner to D1 programs. Some D1 programs are not as organized as you would think. It's really program by program by program. The whole thing is moving forward and developing right now. The landscape is changing as we get new and different coaches in, and schools have moved recently, part-time positions to full-time positions. Everything is in this growth and change.
Knowing that it is school by school, and that once you are as far as how practice works, how everything works, so you're going to have to ask the same questions a lot. Then knowing that we all compete against each other, but when you're talking to us, we all have to operate under the recruiting rules of our division. That's where it gets really confusing. People will see me, Lawrence is a D3 school. Even another coach came up to me and said, “Whoa, wait. That's a sophomore.” I looked at them. I said, “Yes, I can do that. I can talk to sophomores. You can't do that.”
We all have different recruiting rules. You may see one coach doing something, and then you ask the next coach to do the same thing and they say, “I'm very sorry, I can't do that.” Well, if the schools are different divisions, they're not avoiding you. They're operating by the rules of their division.
[0:11:43] BW: Backing up one step, how do you even get on the radar where someone like Eric Momberg is going to know your name and want to come up and talk to you, whether you're a sophomore or a junior, or whatever?
[0:11:55] EM: Reaching out is very important. I think, there's a belief that the college coaches are going to come find you. There are a few instances where that is true. Those people are getting talked to normally by a lot of schools at once. The majority of people fencing in NCAA at all levels, from D1, from the top tier D1 schools, all the way down, the bulk of the group out there is there because they reached out to the coaches, not because the coaches reached out to them. It's actually very hard for us to find their contact information, because they're minors.
I may see someone at an event that I'm interested in, and then someone else comes up to talk to me and I turn to answer that question. When I turn around, the athlete that I was interested in is gone. Then I'm trying to find last name, reach out to the coach, see if the coach will connect me with that person. That kind of thing can be very, very difficult. What I suggest to people is fall of your junior year is when you need to start. Even, if you really want to get an early jump on it, August of your junior year, coming into your junior year, you're collecting that list of schools. Think about what you want to study, and then look up the list of 46 fencing schools and start going through, okay, who has what I'm interested in?
[0:13:19] BW: That sounds like a Google sheet or something, an Excel spreadsheet or something, right, just to make it all clear.
[0:13:25] EM: Right. Yeah. You take a look at that and then you start sending emails to those coaches. What you do is basically, create a couple of attachments, a brief resume, which should have some fencing highlights on it, as well as academic information. What's your current GPA, or your cumulative GPA? If you have taken the tests, what are your test scores? Then a lot of us appreciate video. The bulk of us would rather see some complete five touch bouts than an edited highlight video of just somebody scoring touches.
[0:14:03] BW: Here's all my best touches over two or three years. Yeah.
[0:14:06] EM: If we don't have context in how you built that touch, it doesn't it doesn't say a lot, right?
[0:14:12] BW: Sure.
[0:14:13] EM: That video should be video that you feel represents yourself well. It doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be video of you winning. One of the most impressive videos I ever got from a recruiter, they sent me one bout of video. That was it. It was them losing. Their process through that bout, their opponent was very, very strong. Their process through that route was very intelligent. They were making progress all the way through that bout. It was a 15. Hadn't been a 20, it may have gone another way. Watching them refocus and change their strategies. I watched that one bout and recruited that athlete.
[0:14:55] BW: It sounds like, you saw someone that you could coach, right? Isn't that the ultimate goal in some ways?
[0:15:01] EM: Yes, absolutely. The ultimate goal in recruiting is looking for fit, right? The person that is going to be the ideal fit for my coaching may not be the ideal fit for the coach next to me. As coaches, we may be identical in level, in ability level and result and everything else. There's a saying that I came across and honestly, I can't remember where I came across it at this point. It was, though they're both masters, Van Gogh could not finish Picasso's painting. There's a level, once you get to a certain point, there's some individuality in it. It's going to be this fit and connection between coach and athlete, between school and student, and between team and individuals. You have these three dynamics that you're trying to balance and look for fit in.
You may love the coach and the coaching style, and not fit with the team culture, or love the team culture and the coaching style and not fit with the school. Love the school and not fit with the team culture. You've got to look at all of those aspects as you're going into it. What's right for one person isn't necessarily going to be right for the next person. It is, you have 46 choices. It's just figuring out, okay, where is the fit for me?
Reaching out with that resume, and the video as an attachment, and then you send individual email to each program. Now that you've put all that other stuff in the attachments, that individual email can be a paragraph. It should be individual. When we get form emails, it's pretty evident and you're going to be rushed, you're going to have a lot on your mind and you're going to send one of us a, Dear, Coach Momberg, I'm really interested in fencing at Princeton.” Every coach has a story. We know that that was of course, unintentional.
When you when you keep it down to that little, short paragraph, then you can say, “Coach Momberg, I'm really interested in Lawrence University, because my family is from Wisconsin, and I really love cheese curds.” Now I know that you know where the school is, that you have an idea of why you want to come.
[0:17:28] BW: There's some personality in them. That's always good.
[0:17:31] EM: Exactly. That's the best way to make that intro. Then understand that universities have different levels of spam filtering, and all kinds of things. If you don't get a response, resend that in a week. Make sure that you include the head coach and the coach for your weapon, if it's a larger program, because you don't know which one of them is in charge of the recruiting. Then you can start answering the one who answered you and start that conversation that way.
[0:17:58] BW: Can we talk a little bit more about that video that's being sent? I have a couple of questions. Should it really truly be an attachment? Or is a YouTube link okay? Then also, do you care about production value? It doesn't need to have slick graphics and the fencers name in a little overlay? Or are you really just – you really just care about the fencing that you’re seeing?
[0:18:18] EM: I care about the fencing, as long as I can see the fencing. Certain things can be shot from cellphone. It's really grainy, and it's hard to tell. If the video quality is decent, it doesn't need to be highly edited, as long as I think the information we want out of a video is which fencer is you?
[0:18:40] BW: That helps. That helps.
[0:18:42] EM: If we can't see the names on the back, depending on the angle of the video.
[0:18:46] BW: Right. I never even thought about that.
[0:18:49] EM: Yeah. Some people will just say, “Here are some videos. Video one, I am on the right. Video two, I'm on the left.” Okay, great. I’ll make it. Some people edit and say, fencer X on the right. That can be helpful as well. Just that little note of, okay, which one are you? When was it from? Those types of things can be helpful. No, it doesn't need a lot of slick graphics, or any sound editing. I definitely don't need a voiceover, or a text from other people telling me what it is that I'm seeing in the recruiting video. I've been at it a while and have a fair idea of what I'm looking at.
[0:19:30] BW: You don't need the Telestrator, the man in Telestrator saying, “Look right here. You'll see.”
[0:19:34] EM: Please, see this brilliant curva. Yes, I saw your brilliant curva. Thank you. Just the video in a way that we can see it is really helpful and know which side you're on.
[0:19:44] BW: Got it.
[0:19:45] EM: Some people do put together some nice things with some interview questions type things on them. A lot of the international students will do that. They can be helpful. In most cases, if we're serious about your fencing and talking with you, we're going to sit down and talk with you either in person, or over Zoom, and have that conversation. It's not a bad thing to include, but also, really, we're looking at the fencing. That's going to start that conversation.
[0:20:16] BW: Eric, there's also a decision.
[0:20:17] EM: Yes, I set attachment, meaning separate your information from your email, so you're not having to create this massive email and embed links. Find a way to make your life easy. YouTube channels do tend to be one of the better ways to send video, in my experience. I'm technologically challenged in many ways. YouTube is easy for me to get to. There are some other video share type of things that are really easy to share. Sending it as an mp4 can be really clunky and huge. You can only send about a minute. That's not necessarily the best way. Some kind of a video share like YouTube is a good way to do it.
[0:21:01] BW: That makes sense. I can imagine that with some fencers, there might be that decision, before they even compile all that, that question they ask themselves, am I good enough, right? Juniors and cadettes, they can see how many points they have. They can go to tournaments and see where they finish. How do they translate that into saying, “Can I fence in college? Do I need to be an A rated fencer to be able to fence in college?” How would you answer that question?
[0:21:28] EM: What they should understand is that there are a lot of factors that go into what makes you a fit for an NCAA program. There's an academic piece. There is an organization and time management piece. We're looking at those things as coaches. When you're talking to someone going, “Wow, a talented athlete. But if we get them in here, they're not going to pass.” If you end up on academic probation, you're not contributing to the team. If you're constantly rushing around, trying to keep up with your work, you're not contributing to the team. If you're miserable in the team culture, or the environment. These are all things that we're looking at, well beyond just fencing.
Then, maybe I'm looking at someone's developmental potential. For me, I do that a lot. It’s coach by coach, right? Are we trying to get someone in here who is better than our best person right now on day one? Or are we looking at someone that can fill a role and we see, wow, with two years of lessons, by junior year, that person is an amazing contributor. We're recruiting from a lot of different perspectives, based on the needs that we need to fill. Cultural fit is huge. I think, a lot of times, we see a massive attrition rate, larger in women than men from high school to college. But an attrition rate on both sides, from people ruling themselves out because they don't believe that they're good enough, that were definitely good enough to fence.
Let us figure that out. If you have an interest in the school, let us know that you have the interest. The worst thing that can happen to you is somebody will come back and say, “I'm very sorry, I don't have space.” Coaches want athletes reaching out. We are mostly going to be incredibly polite about that know, as much as humanly possible, because we appreciate that you reached out. I think that that fear of, “Oh, I I'm not good enough. I can't do this.” Because you don't want to hear the no, it's going to be a pretty polite no, if you get one. If you don't reach out, you’ll never have that possibility of the yes.
I would encourage anybody to reach out. There are also situations where the people that are really proactive about it are reaching out to multiple schools, and we know that and that's perfectly fine. We are all talking to multiple athletes. You should be talking to multiple schools. You do not need to hide that from us. We expect that you are talking to multiple programs, and we all know each other and we all talk. It is fine to have multiple programs in there. We have multiple students.
Sometimes, there's a lot of us looking at the same three or four people. They're only going to go to one school. Suddenly, you have two or three schools that all thought that this person was probably coming towards them and they don't. Last minute, in times where you really wouldn't ever have an opportunity, there's still one hanging out there, because something didn't work out for somebody. There's these opportunities that pop up, and suddenly, everybody on the top 50 in the points list is committed and you have this spot open, and you would take good cultural fit, who's a developmental project there, or a walk on, or all kinds of things that wouldn't have happened in a normal recruiting year. Reach out and ask. That's the biggest, the biggest thing is reach out and ask. Ask the question. If you're interested in the school, just send that email and see what happens.
[0:25:09] BW: You've referenced academics a lot, because these are student athletes, right? There's a reason that that's the term that we use. Even if someone might be the best fencer in the country, the school's admissions office still has to say, yes. They still have to say, you are a good fit academically, or you're not. How important is that balance for students to remember that they've got to get into the school academically as well?
[0:25:35] EM: It's very important. It depends on, obviously, depends on the school that you're shooting for. At a D1 level, sometimes there is admissions help, where you can get in, if you are getting an athletic scholarship or athletic aid, you can get into that school on a slightly lower GPA than you would have been able to get in otherwise. When we do things like that, we still need to be sure that you are going to be academically successful. If we're recruiting people that are not academically successful, we're going to hear about it from our administration.
Keeping team GPAs up is important to athletics departments. It's important to coaches. That's something that gets tracked, and it's actually compared in NCAA. Schools are trying to keep their average GPA across all their student athletes up there, which means looking for people who can play at the level we need, but can also survive the academic rigors of the institution. That balance is always there. I would remind people that it is student athletes. It is put that way. When you hear, oh, these are our student athletes, that is the order in which it is prioritized in most programs is that you need that student piece. That's why you're here. You're coming to school to get a degree.
That athlete piece is a very important close second. That does not mean that practices are not mandatory and things like that. They are. We are helping you to balance those two commitments. That's important to all the fencing programs, so all the athletics programs.
[0:27:18] BW: Can we talk about that time commitment a little bit? You talked about mandatory practices. When you're in season, how often are your fencers actually practicing and training and competing in an average week, let's say?
[0:27:30] EM: That's going to differ program by program. The division one maximum is 20 hours per week of training. I don't know anybody who is fully maxing that out. I would say, a good expectation is somewhere between 12 and 15. There are a few programs that I know of that are into that maybe 17, and a couple that are down closer to 10. We're about 12 Here at Lawrence. I'm expecting that 12 to 15 hours a week. Expect daily practices, expect strength and conditioning. These are pretty common things to be happening.
Some programs build their strength and conditioning into their practice hours. Some programs have split hours, where there's a fencing portion of the day and a lift portion of the day, and they may be at two different times. You could have a morning lift three days, a weekend, evening or afternoon practices, things like that.
Then the schedules of every school practice schedule is going to change based on what the academic schedule of the school looks like. If you're at a smaller institution, they're on a block schedule, very difficult to put practice in the middle of the day. Then you're going to have practice either in the morning before classes start, or in the evening after classes are done, lessons in between your classes during the day. Where if you're looking at a D1 situation where there's priority registration for student athletes, now that practice time might be at a stranger, 3:00 in the afternoon, because that's when the practice space is available, or the weight room is available, and your classes gets scheduled around that. It's something again, that you've got to go program by program and ask that question.
[0:29:20] BW: Yeah. It's what you're signing up for, right? It's what you want, because you're getting access to these great coaches and these great facilities. That's cool to see that there is that schedule. You can tell, I was never an NCAA athlete, because I'm interested in this and I think it's super fascinating. One thing we haven't talked about, Eric, is scholarship money. That's I imagine, a question that you heard back that college day event that was so popular. What's the truth there when it comes to getting scholarship money to help pay for college as a fencer?
[0:29:49] EM: Absolutely. Yes, there is scholarship money out there. But you need to understand how much there is and then all of the other opportunities and factors as well. From an actual athletic scholarship standpoint, D1 and D2 schools can have athletic scholarships. The division one maximum is five scholarships, or 500% for women, and 450% 4.5 scholarships for men. That's across the entire team. I said, can have scholarships. Not all of them do.
[0:30:27] BW: Right. That's the max.
[0:30:29] EM: That is the max. Not every school has the max. Not every D1 program actually offers scholarships. That's, again, an asking a thing. The Ivy League's being the prime example. There are no athletic scholarships in the Ivy’s. You're going under, there's financial aid, there's need-based aid, there's those types of things, but not athletically-based aid. You've got that 4.5 to 5 depending, women's athlete, men's athlete, and then that's being broken up across the number of people on the team. If you see a 30-person team, right, if anybody who's getting on to that team with help, with admissions help, is probably on athletic scholarship. Now you're breaking that five up by 30.
[0:31:18] BW: Those aren't five, that's not five people. That's, like you said, 500%. Meaning, it can be chopped up.
[0:31:23] EM: Correct. When I commit that percentage to you, you have that percentage with you for your entire four years. That's 500% over four years. It's not every year, the programs can go out and offer 500%. That's 500% always, rolling total.
[0:31:43] BW: You might be applying in a year where there's not a lot of seniors graduating, right, and then there's less available.
[0:31:48] EM: Correct. If you're looking at a program that has maybe number one in the world, or number five in the world, there's probably a fair amount of that percentage tied up in that person. Now, there's not a lot. If an institution is looking at you, saying 30%, or 20%, that's a pretty decent chunk. That's something to think about. Versus looking at say, the IVs, or a lot of the smaller liberal arts colleges where, okay, no, you're not going to get that athletic aid, but there's merit-based aid and need-based aid, those numbers can be coming in doing from my own experience, 60%, 50% are really, really common numbers.
People end up, going, chasing this like, “Oh, must be an athletic scholarship.” There's a lot of different ways to get funding. Explore that before you get too fixated on just an athletic scholarship. If you're on the world cup points list, things like that, sure. You can expect that there's going to be some athletic aid coming with that. I would also encourage people to look at what are the need-based aid packages? What are the merit-based aid packages? Because a lot of these kids are coming in also with 40 1,400. In a lot of places. That's a pretty sizable merit-based scholarship.
[0:33:07] BW: Yeah. They're also seeing, an admissions office also likes the fact that this is a well-rounded individual, because they're obviously in fencing and have found success there. That could be in the essay, or that could be certainly on the application talking about that, hey, I'm not, “Just a student.”
Finally, Eric, before we let you go here, I want to talk about the collegiate fencing landscape. As you mentioned, there's 46 schools with NCAA fencing programs. A lot of them are on the East Coast, and I believe yours is the only one in the state of Wisconsin, right?
[0:33:39] EM: Yes.
[0:33:40] BW: Where would you personally like to see collegiate fencing in maybe 10 years? How do we get there?
[0:33:46] EM: That's a fantastic question. I think all of us, all of the NCAA coaches would love to see growth in NCAA. I think, the most likely and logical place for that growth is going to be in D3 programs in – as we were talking earlier, the idea that fencers are fairly high academically performing students. Adding a fencing team at a D3 institution is a draw for that institution brings in the type of student that that institution would want. Then having both their school and their fencing actually increases the retention rate for the school. It's a win-win in that regard.
I see the growth being most likely a D3 thought process for now. Then as that takes off, it's possible that we see more D1 schools. I would never rule that out. I think, growth is most possible in D3. Then what that looks like, really, in my opinion, is you've got to connect. You have to connect programs together. That challenge, somebody could have a great argument for starting something in northern Montana. Then, who are you going to compete against? That's where you run right into that travel budget problems. Like, yeah, we're going to do this and then we need this travel budget to get the bouts.
Building off of umbrella programs. I think, I would call it Northwestern here as being a prime example of a school that does this is Northwestern has really worked to support the smaller programs around it. We all have a hub. I know that if when I go to Northwestern winter duels, Zack will prioritize me fencing programs that are not in our region. Rather than me flying to New York defense Vassar, he'll make sure that I get to fence Vassar at the winter duels at Northwestern. Then when we host our own meets, we can all fence each other. Because you can only fence a school twice and have it count in your in your season.
The Midwest schools will all fence each other and then Notre Dame holds a meet where we can fence East Coast. Northwestern does the same. We did a five-school combined camp this summer. We did just an athlete camp, but we had head coaches from five NCAA programs working together, coaching together. We had a blast. We were all giving each other lessons at night, and just kicking around different ideas. I think, the coaches had fun, the athletes had fun.
[0:36:15] BW: That's awesome.
[0:36:15] EM: Northwestern has been pioneering that camaraderie, and it's been really great. Having these kinds of hub programs and building off of it, we could support more D3 programs in our area. Then right now, I'm the western most D3 program. We need to build west off of that, and then connect the dots, so that people have other places to work with. I know, Juan Ignacio at UCSD is trying to pioneer that. Again, you would have to use UCSD as that hub, to be a host institution and things like that as these smaller institutions grow around it. Finding a central point and growing out from it, and then getting those circles to overlap each other, I think, would be the way to make it work.
[0:37:02] BW: That makes perfect sense. I think, with people like you passionate about it, I see no reason why it can't happen. Eric Momberg, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast and good luck to you and the team at Lawrence this season.
[0:37:14] EM: Thank you.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:37:15] 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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