By Ben Goodman ’16, Staff Writer   

Sports fans are all around Newark Academy. They stay up to unholy hours of the night to watch their favorite basketball, hockey, and baseball teams, arriving at school bleary-eyed the next morning. Some of them even write meticulously verbose sports blogs. They know everything, about every sport. Or do they?

Many self-proclaimed sports experts know very little about an important winter sport at the Academy — fencing. Fencing is not only a relatively large team at school, but also an Olympic sport. While most people do know of fencing, few in the United States are interested in learning about it or following it. Somehow, fencing has been excluded from American minds. The Minuteman Sports Section thinks fencing deserves more credit, so we’d like to break down the basics of the sport for the Newark Academy student.

Two opposing fencers face each other on the piste (strip). The fencers salute each other and the referee before donning their masks. At the shout of, “Allez!” French for go, the bout begins.  The fencers play for points, and depending on the level, reaching either five or fifteen points can win it. The bout is also timed, so even if the “magic number” is unreached after time runs out, the win is awarded to the fencer with the most points. A tie precedes a 1-point tiebreaker.

There are three types of weapons with unique corresponding rules: foil, épée, and sabre. The foil blade is around 90 centimeters long. The most common fencing variety, foil requires fencers to target the torso area only. Épée is freer flowing; one can target the entire body, so this form is the one most closely associated to an old-fashioned sword fight. Finally, in sabre, everything above the waistline is fair game. Unlike its two counterparts, sabre allows the fencer to score with the whole blade, not just the tip, so a sabreur must be vigilant of quick attacks.

Newark Academy fencers attest that fencing is a great sport to play, and a worthy sport to follow. “I’ve been fencing for four years for Newark Academy,” said sabreur Ethan Levine, grade 10. “The intensity and emotion in our matches is really incredible, really hard to believe if not seen.” According to Levine, fencing requires both mental and physical prowess, for strategy and execution, respectively. Sophomore George Haglund enjoys the individuality of the sport. He said, “When it comes down to it, it’s just you and your opponent. No one can help you, so it builds a lot of independence.” Judging by these two fencers, fencing is a sport that accepts all levels of commitment. While Levine is able to spread his time among many extra-curricular activities additional to fencing, Haglund has chosen to dedicate himself almost fully to fencing. He practices three hours a day, and fences at national and international tournaments every weekend. He is ranked second in the country for his age group, and he hopes to reach the Olympics come 2016.

What makes football and basketball so much more popular in the United States? “Fencing doesn’t have giant companies sponsoring athletes and promoting the sport,” opined Haglund. Since the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL are billion-dollar businesses, marquee names such as Nike and Gatorade pour money into advertisements featuring top players from those leagues. Also, the “big four” of American professional sports leagues’ games are broadcast to the nation in prime time slots, to lucrative success. In fact, until this year, NBC’s Sunday Night Football was America’s most watched show. Unfortunately, fencing is not one of those sports; it is not even competed at the professional level in the US. When major corporations begin paying attention to fencing, so will the American people. Until then, hard-working fencers at Newark Academy and around the country will train hard and fight on.