Not every campus has NCAA fencing — but that doesn’t mean your fencing story ends. Eric Nassos, head coach (and alum) of Marquette University’s collegiate club, explains how club fencing delivers real teammates, real coaching, real competition — with flexibility that fits college life. We cover how to find/compare programs, the parent role, building or restarting a club, funding and travel hacks, coaching models, and the competitive ecosystem (conferences and USACFC nationals). Plus: what success looks like for walk-ons and experienced fencers alike.
Season 2, Episode 17
Guest: Eric Nassos — Head Coach & former president/captain, Marquette University Fencing (Collegiate Club)
What we cover
Paths after high school if there’s no NCAA team: local clubs, campus clubs, and how to mix both
Starting (or reviving) a club: student sign-ups, admin petition, storage, safety-compliant gear, and budgeting
Funding in the real world: dues, university reimbursements (gas/housing), refereeing local HS events, and why you still need cash up front
Recruiting interest when you’re new: tabling, flyers, dorm hustling, “make some friends,” and simple marketing that works
What to expect at practice: flexible structures, coach + student leaders, mixed experience levels (walk-ons → Cs/Es by graduation)
Parents’ role: researching clubs, DM’ing teams, campus tour questions, where to help — and where to step back
Evaluating clubs: Instagram responsiveness, recent posts, campus name recognition, replies to email/DM, continuity signals
Keeping clubs healthy year to year: positive culture first, competitive goals second, a coach or alumni bridge third
Competition ladder: local meets → regional conferences (e.g., Midwest Fencing Conference) → USACFCnationals
Fielding weapons creatively: start with what you have (epee-only? fine), partner with nearby schools to cover other weapons
Setting expectations: where RYC/JO-experienced fencers fit, how walk-ons progress, and why club fencing builds career-ready skills
Practical takeaways
Green flags: active social accounts, replies to outreach, visible campus awareness, published practice times, clear officers
Budget hacks: learn your school’s reimbursement rules; join USACFC for perks and connectivity; partner with nearby clubs/schools
Practice idea: pair experienced fencers with beginners in simple drills to accelerate skill transfer and community
Lifelong pipeline: club alumni become local-club members, parents of fencers, and future volunteer leaders
Timestamps
0:00 — Club fencing: real team, real coaching, real flexibility
1:49 — Paths if there’s no NCAA program
2:47 — Funding reality: dues, refs, reimbursements
4:00 — If your school has no club (or dormant gear)
5:36 — Finding the first 40 names: “time to make some friends”
7:39 — What experienced fencers can expect (and leadership roles)
9:04 — Walk-on success stories and day-one curriculum
10:59 — Parents’ role: research & outreach that actually helps
12:34 — Comparing clubs: online presence and responsiveness
14:53 — Coaching models & practice structure at Marquette
17:20 — Longevity: culture → competition → coach/alumni bridge
19:35 — How Marquette found the broader ecosystem
22:36 — The competitive ladder: conferences & USACFC
25:42 — Fielding weapons with limited roster (and partnerships)
26:59 — Skill levels: where a JO/RYC background fits
28:55 — What a club trip weekend looks like
30:31 — Time & money expectations (realistic, flexible)
33:15 — Walk-on to rated fencer: a case study
36:00 — Quick hits: lifelong fans, green flags, drills, budget hacks, door sign
Quotable
“You’re a club before you’re a team. Culture keeps people showing up.” — Eric Nassos
“Within the freedom — and the funding gaps — you get a real-world education.” — Eric Nassos
Call to action
Share this with a high-school junior/senior (and their parents). If your campus club needs a hand getting started or connected, Eric says he’s happy to help — reach out at swordandquill.en@gmail.com
Credits
Host: Bryan Wendell • Guest: Eric Nassos
SEASON 2, EPISODE 17
[0:00:01] BW: So, you love fencing. You're headed to college, but the school you fell in love with maybe doesn't have an NCAA team or any varsity program at all. Now what? For a huge number of students, college club fencing is the answer you get. Real teammates, real coaching, real competition, plus a schedule that fits in with academics, internships, and everything else going on in campus life.
Today we're joined by Eric Nassos, head coach of Marquette University's collegiate club in Milwaukee and a former president and captain of that team. He helped build this squad from the inside. He's helped guide walk-ons and veterans and also navigate the broader club landscape from conference meets to the USACFC nationals.
So, in this episode, we'll talk about your options after high school, how you can evaluate these collegiate clubs, where parents should be involved, and maybe even where they shouldn't, and then also some concrete steps to build or grow your team on campus. So, I'm Bryan Wendell. This is First to 15. And welcome, Eric.
[0:01:02] EN: Thank you. I need you to introduce me everywhere I go. That sounded amazing.
[0:01:06] BW: Well, I'm really glad that you're joining us. And you suggested this episode, Eric. It's something that you've actually spoken about before at some of our tournaments. For those who haven't been to one of our college conversation panels, those are some can't miss opportunities to have these same types of discussions. And if you're listening to an episode and think I have a question that I would love to ask, that's a great place to do that.
But today, we're going to cover a lot of what you've shared in that, but also a lot more. Let's start with the big picture. Not every student wants or has access to an NCAA program. Can you talk about what paths exist to keep on fencing once you do get into college, if you're not at a school with an NCAA team?
[0:01:49] EN: Yeah, absolutely. And being in Milwaukee, there are other clubs around that are outside of the college space, outside of the collegiate fencing area, but we also have ourselves over at Marquette. We also have Milwaukee School of Engineering, which is a much smaller program that's starting up right now. We have lots of options, and I feel especially large cities are going to have those.
Once you get out into maybe a college town, it might just be that you have one option, and it's that local college club that you have. And every single club is a little bit different. One of the great things about being outside the NCAA is that you have a lot more opportunity to lead yourselves and really have that freedom. But at the same time, you are very lacking in a lot of the things that NCAA teams benefit from like funding and kind of that structure that you might expect to come from a more professional organization.
[0:02:47] BW: Yeah, it really is a double-edged sword. Because we've talked on this podcast about recruiting rules and the number of hours that you can practice. Obviously, none of that applies to collegiate clubs. But also, like you said, you're also not going to get quite the amount of funding. Taking Marquette as an example, how is the Marquette Club team funded? Because it costs money to even just get everybody in a van and drive to a tournament a few hours away.
[0:03:12] EN: It is. Yeah, it is expensive to run pretty much every step of the process, whether it's getting gear, going to a tournament. Different clubs can approach us in different ways. What we do is, right now we just recently started refereeing for some of the high school tournaments in the area. That provides us with an extra income flow as a club. And then there's also, of course, club dues, which are the most common way across every club in the country, which is you set a number that you expect to cover a certain amount of cost, and then you can run it from there. We're lucky in some ways that, for specific expenses, the university will reimburse the students for certain expenses. It might be gas. It might be housing. But when it comes to the actual expenses themselves, we have to have the money up front first.
[0:04:00] BW: Yeah, that makes sense. So, what if there's a university that doesn't have a fencing club of any kind? Or maybe there used to be one and it's gone dormant, that you see in the history books and the yearbooks, that, "Oh, they used to have a fencing club here. That would be really cool if they had it again." What can a student even do in that situation?
[0:04:21] EN: Yeah. So, most universities will have some form of a budget set aside for new clubs. As long as you have the right amount of sign-ups, you can go and basically make a petition to say here are the 40 people who said they might consider joining a fencing club. And of them, I think 10 will really show up. And that's 10 students that will be active in the club and really show to the university that they're getting something out of this.
And if you say, "We have ideas for this is where we'll store our gear. We know about how much the gear will cost." They might start to infuse some money into that program so that you can really get things running. If you're at a school that has gear originally, maybe it's an old club that died out, and they just have it locked away in some closet, that can be a real blessing and a little bit of a curse sometimes, where now you have all this gear and some might not be usable anymore, or it might not be up to the standard of safety that we would expect in today's fencing. And in those situations, you have to then convince the school, "No, this isn't enough to just restart our club. We need a little bit extra." And usually, schools seem pretty reasonable about that. But of course, that will depend on the administration.
[0:05:36] BW: So, let's back up one step because you said you're going to the student affairs or whatever campus activities group is called at your school, and you say, "I've got 40 people." But if you're an incoming freshman, how do you find those 40 people? What's that process like?
[0:05:53] EN: Yeah, it's time to make some friends. Because usually that requires student buy-in. It might be that you find another fencer on campus. It might just be that you run around your dorm building asking around. I was pretty lucky in the sense that I didn't have that problem. There was an existing club of about three people when I showed up. And so then it was about how do we grow? How do we make sure that the equipment is modern and not really old or unsafe?
[0:06:21] BW: And then some schools will also let you put up flyers at certain places, set up tables at the student union. And so there's other ways to get – even if the club doesn't exist yet, other ways to gauge interest, I guess, and build that buzz maybe.
[0:06:36] EN: Exactly. It's almost in a way like the club sports world in general, but especially from my experience with fencing, it gets you ready for the real world in a lot of ways, where now you have to market the idea of having a club. You have to know how to send a good email that is convincing to people. You have to have all those life skills that I think a lot of students can really benefit from. Within that freedom and within that challenge that you get, or even funding gaps that you might have, there's also this great learning experience that gets you ready for the real world.
[0:07:10] BW: Yeah, I love that. If you're an experienced fencer and you're used to a level of coaching, maybe your club has some really great facilities to it, what's the experience going to be like transitioning to a collegiate club program? Practice frequency, the level of coaching you might expect. And we're going to talk about the competitive landscape in a second. So, let's table that, but just like the experience actually being a member of that program.
[0:07:39] EN: Sure. So, I'll approach it a little bit from the coach's perspective on this one, where I have a couple of athletes who have come in. One in his freshman year was like the second-best in the conference that we belong in right out the gate. We've also had other athletes who are very well established in that same conference and very competitive fencers from before they made it to college. When we see that come across, it's a great thing for the club because that means that there's more than one of you. If you're the only one, you can expect to very much be in a leadership role, right?
Whether that's just being your team captain because you don't like doing all the paperwork for behind-the-scenes stuff, or whether that means, no, you really have to drag this club to success and really take ownership for what you're doing. We all make it to a certain point in fencing through a level of commitment that we have. And the great part about going to college is you get to test out, "Do I really want that level of commitment?"
Freshman year, generally speaking, I try not to put too much pressure on new athletes who maybe have that past experience. But once we're really pushing forward, or if we're starting a new weapon or a new program. We're recently starting up our women's foil team. Before, we just had one women's foil athlete. Now they're starting to show a little bit more leadership in that activity to try and bring in friends, try to bring in other experienced foilists who maybe haven't found out about our club existing on campus yet.
[0:09:04] BW: Yeah. We should say, too, we're talking a lot about people who are current members and wanting to either join or start a collegiate club. Obviously, it's also a great environment for walk-ons as well. And although the majority of our listeners are already bought in, they're into fencing. They love fencing. Have you had experience with someone who they heard about the fencing team at Marquette and were like, "I want to try that," and now they're going to competitions?
[0:09:28] EN: Yeah, that is a vast majority of the athletes that I coach.
[0:09:32] BW: Great.
[0:09:33] EN: One of the great things that we have is it's a skill level that has a big range in collegiate club fencing. You have some that easily could have gone NCAA, easily could have gone for that higher level of competition, and instead decide, "I really want to focus on academics. Or this school is just a better fit for my life in all these other ways." And then at the same time, we have lots of students who show up just like you were saying, and they're just, "Hey, this is cool. I haven't really done a sport before. Or maybe I just don't want to run track in college," or whatever their activity might be, and they say, "Let me try out this other activity. Or maybe I have a friend who recommended it."
And they show up, and we start out from day one, right? Here's how you advance. Here's how you retreat. This is a simple lunge. Let's get into the parry positions and how we actually conduct ourselves when we're on the strip. And we have some athletes that end up D or C-rated by the end of their time in college, depending on what that commitment level is like, and they start really getting into the sport and taking it seriously.
[0:10:32] BW: That's got to be very rewarding for you as a coach as well, seeing someone who maybe couldn't even tell the difference between the three weapons coming in, and now they're going out there and competing for the university. The parents' role here, Eric. How can parents help their student find the right fit and push them in the right ways toward continuing fencing in college through the club path?
[0:10:59] EN: Yeah, I think parent involvement is great to have as a coach. We have some parents who will offer to go and pick up lunches for the students when we're at a tournament, and that sort of thing. So, in that early phase of trying to figure out what club should my student be going to, what level should they be fencing at? Is this school right for them? If they're really valuing fencing above other things, how do we make a list of schools that includes fencing as a program in the club scene?
I think that's a great way to get organized is to, A, go to the USA fencing website and look at the collegiate fencing clubs, but also check out if there are Instagram pages that have each of those fencing clubs there. Marquette University just recently joined the US Association of Collegiate Fencing Clubs, which is associated with USA Fencing. Before then, we were really only an Instagram page on our internet presence, and we were kind of floating around in this limbo state where we were competitive. We were going to competitions, but not really belonging to any governing body of fencing. You'll find a lot of that in club sports.
So, when you're looking at a college, check out their Instagram page to see how active the club is. The university should also be posting what clubs they have, but sometimes they'll post they have a fencing club, and I found out it was three people, and they were all seniors. So now it's on the freshman to go and figure out what can happen. Had I checked their online presence, I might have found that it's a smaller club. And if I'm okay with that or not okay with that, it could affect a decision being made.
[0:12:34] BW: Yeah, that's great. And that does get me into the next question I was going to ask about comparing schools. Okay. The Instagram page, that's a great idea. Because if they haven't posted in 38 weeks, then maybe they're not super active, or maybe that just means that they don't have a social media person this semester, right?
[0:12:51] EN: Right, exactly.
[0:12:52] BW: Are there other ways that you can assess the quality of a collegiate fencing club? And I don't necessarily mean how good the fencers on the team are, but just how active they are and how supported a fencer is going to be if they want to make that part of their college experience.
[0:13:09] EN: Sure. In some ways, you can actually just get in touch with those programs, right, if you see that they have an Instagram. But maybe there aren't a lot of people in the pictures. You can just DM them. It's a very informal process at our level because we don't have recruiting rules. So, I should maybe even make it clearer earlier. I don't officially work for the school. I work for the club as a coach.
So, when we reach out to students, it's very much just, "Hey, I can't recruit you. I can't give you any money. But if you have any questions or if you need a referral to another club, I have a lot of connections in that way." I've had the coach from Purdue. He's a wonderful guy. He reached out to me and said, "Hey, I have an athlete interested in Marquette. Would you mind meeting her?"
Same thing has happened with me referencing someone to maybe Michigan State, right? And this creates a dialogue between programs, where if you get in touch with one, you might be able to get in touch with many. And if you reach out to the school administration, they'll probably at least be able to put you in touch with whoever is the president or leader of that club.
[0:14:13] BW: And if they respond, that's a great sign that they're actively recruiting and looking, right? You don't get bounced back.
[0:14:20] EN: If they don't respond, there's also the question of these clubs are officially run by the students. So, it might just be that they're not very good at checking their email, and maybe you need to do a follow-up.
[0:14:31] BW: Yeah, that's a great point. It doesn't necessarily mean that the doors are totally closed. Okay, that's awesome. Now let's move on to kind of Marquette as a case study. And so how is coaching done at Marquette, and how might that differ from coaching prior to your joining the program? I guess what is your coaching philosophy with your students there?
[0:14:53] EN: Yeah, it changes very much from university to university. But from my experience, it's based on how much free time I have, right? I work a real job outside of fencing and really just help out because I'm a passionate alumni nearby. But when it comes to how to approach the students and how to really lead that coaching, one of the first things is understanding what's their experience level coming in. If they have no experience, we're starting with all of the basics right away. If they have experience already, maybe they'll be doing drills with some of the students who are more advanced early on, or maybe they'll be helping to teach some of those lessons.
I show up to practice about twice a week. That's much more than I used to do. I used to be about every other week. What happens is I'll lead one session where I'm just teaching basically drills, walking people through in a class environment. And then one day, I will also be doing private lessons for the students who are interested in that. Maybe they're looking to push themselves to a higher degree.
We also then have students who are maybe looking more for a social experience. And for them, I'm just going to be a positive face who kind of teaches the basics and lets them do whatever they want outside of that because they're not looking to go to competitions necessarily.
It really is a diverse range of people that you're working with and ways to approach each one. Maybe I'll need to step it up with an athlete who has a much higher level of experience. Some of them, I think, are probably better than me at fencing, and especially certain events that I don't do as much. So, it's like how do I challenge this fencer who has experience while also giving this other fencer who's brand new something that's rewarding and an opportunity to build from the ground up?
[0:16:40] BW: Yeah, I think that's really interesting. The continuity of a collegiate fencing club or any college club, sports or not, is a crisis and challenge. Because like you noticed, when a senior who is basically running the entire club himself or herself leaves, the club is at risk of collapsing. How can you keep a club healthy from year to year? You've joined the club, you say, "I'm invested in this and I wanted to be here after I'm gone, after I graduate from Marquette or wherever I'm going." What can students do to do that? And then also, what do you do, Eric, to keep Marquette going strong?
[0:17:20] EN: Yeah. So, there are three things that I think are most significant. And the first is how positive and welcoming is your social environment as a club? You are a club before you are a team. You're a club sports team, right? So it's a bunch of students who are choosing as adults to spend their time together doing an activity that requires them to function as a group. If people start getting really mean to each other or disrespectful, or not everyone has to be best friends, but if you aren't able to get along in the sense that a team requires, that is the first way that you start losing members immediately before people are graduating.
One of the big ways to attract more people is to be very positive. But then also the second step, which is to be competitive. If your program is showing results that are successful, maybe you can say, "Hey, this is someone who on day one knew nothing, and he came home with a medal." Other guys who are brand new or other girls who are brand new to the sport will see that and say, "Maybe I should stick with this and keep trying." Right? I'll see that there's success maybe four years down the line. Between that and the leadership potential, some big opportunities there.
The last one is everyone graduates. At some point, there needs to be a person that bridges that gap. This is the least essential of the three, but I think having a coach really benefits the program. Because like you were saying, if you lose those seniors and maybe you have a week recruiting year or maybe two-week recruiting years, now all of that club knowledge and all of that skill that's been built up is gone. And so it's purely reliant on how well the younger students who don't know each other as well get along socially.
By having a coach there to smooth things over and keep things consistent, and also deliver more opportunities to the club, you have that growth potential. But if you don't have a coach, it's not something that's going to sink the entire program. I know of several programs that are much larger and more storied than Marquette that have absolutely functioned with minimal or no coaching.
[0:19:35] BW: Yeah. So, we've talked a little bit about the club's growth. And I think you could have a successful collegiate fencing club that never fences anybody other than the people in the club, right? But eventually, a club is going to want to join the broader fencing world. How did Marquette figure out that there was this broader fencing world out there? And what has that experience been like?
[0:20:00] EN: I'm glad you asked this one. It's a pretty unique situation. I joined the program as a freshman with no past experience outside of a club that only fenced itself in, going back to when I was 8 years old. I would show up once a week. There was no electric scoring. There was one coach who just – we did what we were told because we didn't know any different in the fencing world.
And then I showed up to Marquette. And once again, it was a program that was – it's actually classical fencing, which is very much like the historic European martial arts kind of direction of fencing. And so, of course, there was no electric scoring. There was no governing body. There is no significant investment, or leadership, or really any of that going on outside of one coach who is very knowledgeable and very skilled, but not necessarily pointing outward toward the rest of the fencing world.
One day, I got frustrated with how scoring was being done using eyeballs and whether you felt something. So, I checked out what clubs were around, and I saw Caliber Fencing Club and Ataba Fencing Club, which are near the Milwaukee area, and checked them out. Got wired up for the first time and then started finding out, "Okay, there's this thing, USA Fencing." And I'm a big podcast guy. So, I found out about this show and started listening. And that was when I heard about Eric Momberg over at Lawrence University. And it was my first podcast that I listened to. I just clicked, "Okay, what's the most recent one?" And sure enough, it's him explaining the idea of a hub, where one college can support another college, and then that helps to build more programs.
And I look up, "Where is Lawrence University? Who is this guy, Eric Momberg?" And sure enough, he's in Wisconsin. And so I reached out, and thanks to this show, kind of made my first connection to actual USA fencing programs that were related to colleges. And since then, the investment has been huge, and it's been incredible to get that going. And when I say huge in terms of investment, I mean like of time. We're still not really huge on money. Yeah. But it's been an incredible growth.
[0:22:13] BW: Small steps, right? Small steps.
[0:22:15] EN: Yeah. Yeah. We started with only epee because it was the cheapest one. We didn't need to get as much gear, and because some of the clubs nearby had it. And then now we have foil. We've made a partnership with UW Whitewater. And they have Saber. So, we feel one team together. And yeah, it's been a lot of progress.
[0:22:36] BW: So, what are the competitive opportunities when you want to go out and fence another school? What does that look like? I think most of our listeners have an understanding of the NACs and the regional tournaments within USA fencing. And also, I would imagine several have an understanding of how NCAA fencing is structured around meets and then conference championships, regionals, and ultimately the NCAA championships. Is there an equivalent within collegiate club fencing where you could become the champion of the collegiate club scene?
[0:23:11] EN: There definitely is, yeah. And we have athletes who compete in those other areas as well as our own. But we function very much tournament style. It's the same format, usually, as USA NCAA fencing tournament. The same way that your Notre Dames, your Harvards of the world are doing their formats is a similar team format to what we have. We are much less centralized, though. So, not every team that's even in your section of the country might be in the same conference, or they might not know that that conference exists, but the way that it kind of looks is almost a pyramid.
There's the US Association of Collegiate Fencing Clubs at the very top. Those are usually going to be the most organized clubs. They compete by going across the country on many years, right? So, a tournament might be in Virginia Beach, and a bunch of teams from, I don't know, California, Texas, the Midwest might end up there. That tournament only happens once a year. To get all of the rest of the competition going, there are more regional circuits.
We have the Midwest Fencing Conference, which is what we really compete hard to win every year. It's going to be schools that are more similar to your own. For us, a lot of them are big 10. But then we'll also end up with schools like ourselves or Augustana, where it's a school that's outside of a major conference in itself.
Then even below that, you have all the clubs that are just reaching out to each other and saying, "Hey, do you have enough people this year to do a meetup? Let's host a tournament." "Okay." And then they reserve some time at their gym, and maybe two schools show up, and they have a great time, which is awesome. And the goal obviously is to pull them up into that next level of maybe a regional conference, and then maybe participate at more of a national level.
[0:25:06] BW: That's super cool. So, if I'm hearing you right, your program started out as epee only, which is again not something you'd see at the NCAA level, but you would see at the club level, the USA fencing club level, with a lot of programs who specialize in just maybe one or two weapons. So I guess my question is that doesn't necessarily have to be a limitation then if you have five people who all want to fence epee. You're not required to field a foil and saber team to be able to compete at some of these tournaments that you're talking about. Am I understanding that right?
[0:25:42] EN: Yeah. So, we would show up with men's and women's epee at our first year of actually competing. And what we would do is just forfeit the other two events and say, "We're going to do the best that we can with what we have." And so, we would show up to a tournament that maybe has five teams. And we're taking ourselves out of contention for an overall win, but we can still try to be the best at our event.
And then once we partnered with UW Whitewater, okay, now we're going to compete in epee and saber. And then now our team has grown enough and we have some experienced foilists. So let's try to build so that we can actually do well in all three events. But if we were to shrink, I'm sure that we would just go with, "Okay, we have a bunch of new people." Maybe it's six total people and three are guys, three are girls, and we have one experienced foilist, and that's it. Then we're doing foil, right? And that's just how we would have to organize.
[0:26:35] BW: Yeah. Yeah. You have to be flexible and dynamic as everything changes. So we've talked a little bit about the competition. Can you help me get a sense of the level of competition? Let's say a high school fencer is used to competing at RYC's and has maybe even a top 32 at JO's, where will the competition level align in club fencing so that they can set goals for themselves for that first year? Say, "I did this well at a NAC recently. Top 64 at a NAC. Where's that going to put me in the collegiate club scene?"
[0:27:18] EN: It'll put them toward the top. It's important to note that there are always going to be others like you, right? There's still going to be competition. But once you see it your freshman year, you might start saying, "Okay, I really need to focus on beating one of these four and whoever shows up that's a freshman in our conference after this."
Especially if you're at a USACFC team, you're probably going to get a much broader range of schools and a much broader range of skill sets once you're at those tournaments, because those are the more committed schools to the sport. But yeah, we have a couple of athletes who are pretty talented, and what they found is, certain tournaments, they'll breeze through most competition. And then certain tournaments, they'll show up and they're really struggling to get through someone. And that's when it starts to get fun, is like, "Okay, now that we've gotten everyone with a chip on their shoulder in the same room, let's see what happens after that."
And the same thing might happen for the less experienced people, where they realize, "I've been going against all these schools that have those high-level athletes, and now I'm against a school that I'm feeling really great competing against them because the competition level, I'm more used to a higher level than they are now by gaining that experience." A wide range. A very wide range.
[0:28:37] BW: Once the mask comes off and the trophies or medals have been awarded, what's a college fencing trip like? You got the team and you are out of town, and the tournament's over for the day. What happens then? What does the team usually get up to?
[0:28:55] EN: Yeah. Again, there is more freedom than there would be in the NCAA. But I am I'm no longer a student, so I'm not usually privy to what's going on too much.
[0:29:04] BW: Okay.
[0:29:06] EN: Right. So what happens is we'll drive in kind of morning of a tournament if it's close by. Otherwise, we'll drive in from out of town. We have one coming up very soon at Michigan State University. They always host a great tournament. So we are going to drive over there the day before. And then the rule is stay healthy. Make sure that you're taking care of yourselves in a way that benefits your competition tomorrow. Good night. I'm going somewhere else.
And then the next morning, we show up on time for the tournament, fence our hearts out. And then at the end of the tournament, we kind of thank the people who were hosting, and we go and get a big team dinner, usually at some kind of a buffet or a restaurant that can handle, I don't know, 20-something year olds. Then we have to go and make sure that people are eating and have a great time with that. And then we drive back and get back pretty late.
[0:30:01] BW: Sounds like a pretty fun weekend, honestly. Talk to me about the time and money expectations for a college club fencer. Because a lot of people don't want to have just one extracurricular activity in college and they also want to graduate in four years, so they need to be focused on academics as well. So let's talk about those two things. What is the time commitment and what's the financial commitment that someone might be looking at?
[0:30:31] EN: Yeah. Generally speaking, when it comes to time commitment, we try to provide as many opportunities for those students to show up as possible. We have local clubs that they can practice at. In addition to that, we have our own practices that we go to 3 days a week. So we do 2-hour practices 3 days a week. 6 hours with the club. Some students who really, really love the fencing side of things, they'll just commit to that, and they'll be driving themselves out to other clubs on the weekends or on other weekdays.
That is not at all the expectation, though. Generally, from what I've heard, most teams require you to show up for practices in the two weeks leading up to your next tournament that you're going to. And even then, if you miss one for an exam, don't worry about it. We have people who show up once a week. Pretty much every year, there's at least one person who only shows up socially, meaning that they don't show up to practice. They show up right as practice is ending. They say hello to everyone and then they go and hang out at someone's dorm or apartment, which is great. I love that for them. I'm not going to start them at a tournament. But they're having fun with the fencing club, and that's great. It really depends time commitment-wise.
When it comes to financial commitments, we try to keep things as cheap as possible for the athletes. Generally speaking, if you're going to be competing, you are responsible for your own gear, but that's because we try to keep the actual dues very low. The Marquette team recently joined as an official club with USA Fencing, so the dues went up a little bit, so we could pay to be a part of all those benefits. But overall, we can provide an access level membership for local tournaments as a part of the club membership that we have. That lowers the overall cost of being an athlete down pretty well.
And then, whatever travel is, we try to do our best to get reimbursements from the school and lower the amount of investment that we need from individual students. I think our dues are $50 this year, which is a third of what most other programs are doing, but that's just because we run such a tight ship.
[0:32:44] BW: Yeah, very interesting. The development of a fencer, tell me a little bit about an experience you might have had with a walk-on beginner who really left the program or has developed in a way in the program to where they're competitive at tournaments and having a wonderful experience. Have you had something like that happen at Marquette?
[0:33:15] EN: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, in terms of a walk-on, someone who's – and walk-on for us is everyone, technically, but in terms of someone who has never fenced before, right? Someone who is brand new to the sport. We have had a few fencers get ratings, right? We'll send them to a local competition. Maybe it's a C-rated tournament, and that student comes back with an E. And we've had that happen with freshmen, which is great, right? They just figure out those two or three things that they're really good at.
But probably the big success story was one of the last students who was in the club at the same time that I was. And so I worked with him for all four years, some of that time as his teammate. He recently got a C-rating at a tournament. This would have been early this year, right before graduating. Got his C rating. Placed top eight in our conference. Has a really, really weird style. It's not one that you develop by having those years of pre-college structured training. It's that I'm here to have fun, but I also want to compete as hard as I can. What can I do to get that edge without having maybe a conventional style?
That was an incredible journey to go on. Because people on both teams that are watching this bout are watching it and just scratching their heads like, "How do you pull that one off?" While at the same time saying that the next move might be a beautifully executed lunge, or a flache, or incredible distance management that we developed specifically for.
And what I like to say is we do at least one competition with Lawrence University per year. They have an NCAA program. How can we show up with a team that maybe has never ever fenced before, and after only two months, they're not embarrassed with their performance when they go up against an NCAA program? How can we develop that? So, we end up with people finding their niche and sticking to it, and developing a lot of patience and willingness to try new things. Kind of spur of the moment. And it results in pretty good fencing, even if it maybe as a coach doesn't always look like good fencing, but it leads to better results that way with that level of experience that we're working with.
[0:35:35] BW: Yeah, you can't argue with the results. Okay, so let's move into kind of the quick hit section where I'm going to ask you five quick questions. The first is how do collegiate clubs set their fencers up to become lifelong fans of fencing? Whether they're participating for life or just loving the sport for the rest of their lives, what can a collegiate club do to achieve that in your mind?
[0:36:00] EN: I think one of the first things is that sense of community, right? Having other alumni once you've graduated who maybe they kept fencing and now you're keeping up with your friend. Or maybe you find a community through it, and now you're training all the time with them. Whatever that might look like, you have that opportunity to continue with the sport.
It also exposes a lot of those people who are going to be, I don't know, in the next 10 years, they might be parents at some point. And so then when they have kids, they actually know that fencing exists and how to get engaged with it, which is totally different from I feel like how most people would see the sport if their parents don't know about, "Here's fencing. It has all these opportunities. It's very fun. It's very safe." Then I think there's also that aspect of if you join the US Association of Collegiate Fencing Clubs. And it's such a long acronym. I wish that would be fixed, but it is what it says it is. Is that if you go through that program, you get a lot of perks for your team that go through USA Fencing. And so by kind of pulling those out, you have a membership with USA Fencing. You know what different level memberships there are. You're already introduced to that world. It just makes it easier to keep going.
[0:37:16] BW: I love that. All right, question two. What is a green flag for a college club? If you're researching different schools, what is a sign that the club is well-run and one that you should definitely keep on your list of schools that you want to consider?
[0:37:34] EN: Actively posting on social media is always a great sign. Responsive to your outreach. And one of the things that I've seen recently was if you are taking a tour of the university and you say that you like fencing, if the tour guide goes, "Oh, I just learned we have that. It seems so fun." That is a huge green flag because it means that they are active and the student body actually knows about them. And that's something that we didn't have as a program until recently.
[0:38:02] BW: Yeah, you want that name recognition on campus if you can. Okay. So, number three, do you have a favorite activity at practice that works really well for mixed groups? In other words, beginners who have never been fencing and then those who are more experienced fencers. Do you have something that that you like to do, a drill, a you warm-up activity or something that works for everybody?
[0:38:26] EN: One of the things that I really like to do from the coaching side is give kind of simple drills, but make sure that the experienced fencers are working directly with the less experienced fencers. And that really helps you know which new fencer is learning quickly and maybe you can start building with them. Whereas if someone seems to be struggling with the experienced fencer helping them, that tells me where I need to go and focus maybe some more effort.
It also bridges that gap of, "Oh, this is so and so. They're really good at fencing. Maybe I shouldn't talk to them so much." It makes the students a resource for each other, and it helps to foster that feeling of everyone's in this together. We're one team. Let's help each other out. So, not exactly one individual drill, but kind of a style of leading practice.
[0:39:16] BW: Yeah, that concept. That's great. So, number four. So, let's talk about like a budget hack. Is there one low-cost move that instantly improves a collegiate club's, I don't know, training, or travel experience, or something where you were like, "This didn't really cost us much, but it's made a big difference at tournaments, or in practice, or even in the moments in between?"
[0:39:41] EN: I'm guessing you mean more from the management side of the team?
[0:39:46] BW: Yeah, from the management side, something that maybe you put some budget behind or spent a few dollars on, and it's made a difference.
[0:39:53] EN: Yeah, I'll say probably two things. One is make sure you understand your school's policy on reimbursement for those clubs, right? If you spend money on something, there's usually a budget to get that money back. That should be something that actually makes your club profitable, which means that you have more money than you did before. Sometimes our students don't recognize that when they're in charge.
The other big thing I think that has helped us out is engaging with USA fencing. People are always willing to help. They start providing a lot of resources for you. And so just identifying what step are we ready for with them and what kind of resources are available. That has been a huge difference maker for us in just the last year to accelerate our club from just epee to partnerships and growth, and having all six events fielded.
[0:40:48] BW: Last one, what would the sign above the door say for the Marquette Fencing Club? If it's one to four words, let's say, as you're walking into the room where you all meet and train, what would that sign say?
[0:41:03] EN: That's a very difficult question to – let's see. A hardworking community or something along those lines for Marquette specifically. Yeah.
[0:41:14] BW: Yeah. I love that.
[0:41:15] EN: Either that. Or I think there was something that a mayor from Berlin described Berlin as that I won't say for this podcast, but involves being a little bit broke.
[0:41:24] BW: I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's part of the life and finding a way to make the most of the resources you have. Eric, that wraps it up today. And I just want to say thanks for helping demystify the college club path. And what I love about you is you're giving people a sense of the roadmap that keeps fencing in their lives for as long as they want. So, if you're listening to this and this helped you understand collegiate club fencing a little bit better, please share it with a rising senior, or a junior, or someone else that you know who is considering fencing in college. And definitely keep listening to First to 15 for more conversations like this. Eric, thank you so much and good luck this season. I'm sure we'll be seeing you at a USA fencing tournament as well before long.
[0:42:12] EN: Absolutely. And thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. And if anyone listening needs help finding a resource or they're at a college club that's struggling, I'm happy to help.
[0:42:22] BW: That's great. Thank you so much, Eric.
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. And if you like this podcast, please help us grow and reach more people by leaving us a rating or a 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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