Maine youths taking a stab at fencing

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CONTOOCOOK, N.H. – Mickey Creeley fidgeted as he got ready for the bronze medal bout of the under-20 men’s foil competition at the Junior Olympic fencing qualifier last weekend.

The 17-year-old from Hudson was facing Noble Clark, who had already beaten Creeley once in Saturday’s preliminary rounds.

Creeley straightened his weapon. He pulled on his vest, checked his glove and adjusted his mask. He held the foil in front of him one last time to make sure it was straight.

Then, Creeley avenged his loss and beat Clark 15-11 to finish the day’s competition with a 10-3 record, win the bronze medal, and grab one of four spots allocated to the Northeast Division of the U.S. Fencing Association for February’s Junior Olympics in Oakland, Calif.

“I got him on touches,” Creeley told his father, Tom, in between pants. “I pretty much abandoned the point attack. He didn’t want to get close to score. I think he was pretty tired.”

On Sunday, Adam Ivy of Bangor woke up in New Hampshire with a sore throat. He was nervous and his body cord broke just before his bout against Vermont fencer Christian Fisher. Ivy won that bout but finished the first round of preliminaries with an inauspicious 2-2 mark.

He shrugged off his ailment, regained his control, and bounced back to win his next six bouts. His 8-4 record was good for fourth place and a seat next to Creeley on a plane to California.

“I wasn’t focused at first,” Ivy said. “I just told myself to calm down.”

Creeley and Ivy may be the first Maine residents to qualify for the Junior Olympics in fencing. They are a part of a growing number of junior fencers, according to northern New England coaches.

Chris Pullo, the head of Sea Coast fencing and the founder of the Northeast Division, said his club of 92 members is now half juniors and half seniors. There were just a few junior members from Sea Coast when he founded the club in 1992.

“Fencing in the United States has turned into a young person’s game,” Pullo said. “More and more often kids are starting at an earlier age and it’s available to younger kids.”

Vermont Fencing Alliance president Viveca Fox said she doesn’t know the exact figures, but the number of junior fencers in the 50-member alliance has jumped, too.

The Down East School of Fencing is the first private club in Maine in 10 years, according to owner and moniteur John Krauss. When Krauss moved to Verona from New Hope, Pa., two years ago, Colby and Bates had small fencing clubs and there was some interest in the Portland area.

“There were pockets of people who knew how to fence and a few adults who had fenced in the past, but not in the past 10 to 15 years,” he said. “So I did a lot of refreshing of people’s skills.”

Now, Krauss teaches fencing to 37 people at sites in Bangor, Belfast and Blue Hill. Creeley and Ivy are his two most experienced junior fencers.

An old sport

The lack of fencers fencing drought in Maine means few people in the state may know about the sport, which has changed little since the modern rules were set at a 1914 convention in Paris, France.

Technically, fencing is a martial art derived from sword fighting. Now an Olympic and NCAA sport, fencers can compete in three weapons – foil, saber and epee – and each uses a different method and target.

Creeley and Ivy both compete in the foil, which has the most specific target of the three weapons. Points are awarded only for touches on the trunk of the body.

In saber, the trunk and arms are target areas. In epee, the whole body is fair ground.

Foil is also considered the beginner weapon, because the specificity of the target area demands that the fencer know the basics.

“It teaches you the handwork, the footwork, the offensive and defensive motions,” Krauss said. “From foil you can learn epee and saber a lot easier. Those teaching methods are a variation of the foil teaching method.”

Scoring is done electronically, with a network of wires connected to the handle of the weapon, strung through the fencer’s shirt and clipped to the back of the fencer’s vest, or lame (pronounced lah-MAY). The string of wires is called the body cord.

The weapon, in the case of the foil, has a wire running up the inside of the metal. At the tip of the foil is a small spring that registers when enough pressure has been put on it. Before each bout the director places a weight on the tip that measures the amount of pressure it takes to set off the light. If the light goes off too easily, the fencer has to use a different foil and the director will issue a yellow card warning. If the second foil fails the pressure test, the fencer gets a red card and the opponent is awarded a point before the bout begins.

The lame vest is made of small threads that conduct electricity. The wires from the weapon and the lame are clipped to the back of the fencer’s vest and run through a box, called a reel, that is placed to the side.on the floor off the strip. Once through the reel, the current flows to the box, which has a set of four lights that indicate who has touched whom and, therefore, scored a point.

The fencers duel on a strip, which is the term for a section of the floor 14 meters long and 1.5 to 2 meters wide.

During the bout, the fencers exchange blows of the weapon, called parry (the deflecting move) and riposte (the responsive move to the deflection). After each sequence that causes a light to go off on the box, the director stops the bout to explain the scoring. A fencer can earn a touch if his attack is on target, and the fencer on defense can earn a point if the defensive response hits the target. It can get confusing to the extent that occasionally, when the light goes off, the director stops the bout but doesn’t award a point because he’s not sure himself of what happened.

In the Brazilian method of tournament seeding, which is how last weekend’s qualifyer was conducted, fencers are divided into pools based on the number of competitors. Each fencer has a bout with every fencer in the pool. The group is redivided and the fencers duel everyone in the new pool. In these premliminary rounds the fencers duel to five touches or four minutes, whichever comes first.

After the results are tallied the fencers are seeded. The fencers duel in direct elimination bouts, with the highest seed facing the lowest. In this round the fencers have two, three-minute periods with two, one-minute breaks to score 15 touches.

It can take hours for one group of competitors at a tournament to finish. Mickey Creeley fenced from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. before he knew he had qualified for the Junior Olympics.

Tradition and fads

With all the rules and use of French, fencing tends to conjure up images of aristocratic dueling, even though it is an Olympic and NCAA-sanctioned sport.

Indeed, fencing etiquette has changed little over the years. The director tells the fencers to get ready by saying the French term, “en garde.” Fencers respond with a “oui” when asked if they are ready. The word riposte is derived from the French for respond. The levels of instruction are moniteur, prevost (pronounced pre-VOH) and maestro. Before the bout, the fencers tip their weapons to each other and the director. One director, Tracy Nabstedt, called the fencers on his strip “master” and “gents.”

Most fencers still wear white jackets, knickers, socks pulled up to the knee and white sneakers.

“There is a formality to fencing, and that’s a part of the appeal. It’s very well-structured,” Krauss said.

There was some bucking of the all-white tradition on Sunday, when a few of the younger fencers, including Ivy, were spotted in black sneakers.

Fencing is also still thought of as a sport available only to wealthy families, Krauss said. Although the initial cost can be fairly high, the weapons and clothing tend to last for years. And there’s no greens fee, lift ticket or court time to pay. Mickey Creeley initiallylearned to fence at the Old Town YMCA, and Krauss said parents shouldn’t buy top-of-the-line equipment for children who are interested in fencing for recreation.

The wave of junior fencers has brought about more than changes in clothing styles. Many young competitors now use a technique called a flick, brought about by the introduction of electric scoring.

The flick uses the flexibility of the foil blade to just graze the body for a touch with the tip of the foil, which sets off the light.

“Now, all the kids do it. It’s cool because it’s very visual. Sometimes the kids who do it well get an attitude about it because it’s so cool-looking,” Krauss said.

A mind game

When Mickey Creeley started taking lessons at Down East Fencing, he had the basics down but didn’t know much about the latest changes in fencing technique such as the flick. That’s because Mickey’s father taught Mickey what he knew from his own experience fencing in high school and college.

Krauss, who started teaching Mickey two years ago, said Tom Creeley’s lessons helped Mickey Creeley quickly pick up more intricate fencing moves.

Creeley’s success may also be related to his karate black belt, which he earned when he was 12. Karate and tae kwon do, which Creeley has also studied, mimic some of the same moves as fencing and emphasize mind and body control.

“It’s the same one-on-one rather than the team sport,” Creeley said. “The stances are similar and there’s the same aggressiveness.”

Ivy had played some roller and ice hockey but was interested in fencing after he saw a Down East Fencing advertisement. His parents gave him six lessons for his birthday.

“We grew up watching Zorro on television but that was the extent of our experience with fencing,” said Lee Ivy, Adam’s father. “We had no knowledge of the rules and what was involved.”

Now, Ivy said, fencing is his favorite sport, and Krauss said he has advanced quickly. Ivy has been fencing for about the same amount of time as Creeley, but he had none of Creeley’s prior experience with the weapons or the control from other martial arts.

“This is just something that I’ve always wanted to do,” Ivy said. “It’s fun. I don’t know why it’s come easily to me. Maybe it’s because I’ve put a lot of effort into it.”

Ivy is home-schooled, and Krauss said children who have unusual backgrounds may be attracted to fencing because of its individualistic nature.

“The sport appeals to kids who don’t jump into team sports,” said Krauss. “The people in fencing are very individual. They tend to enjoy tactics, and it’s a very mentally stimulating environment and [has] a lot of mental games that you play with your opponent.”

Now that Creeley and Ivy have qualified for the Junior Olympics, they face one more hurdle on their way to California – the cost of the trip. Krauss said he may schedule some tournaments to raise money for the airfare and hotel.

Ivy may have to do some work on his parents to convince them to help pay for the trip.

“It depends on how nice you’re going to be to us,” Lee Ivy told Adam with a laugh.