By: Chelsea Jordan
“One point at a time.”
These were the words going through Fencing Club member Spencer Lopez’ mind as he was down two points with two minutes left in a direct elimination round at the Temple Open. Facing a fencer from the University of North Carolina, Lopez tied it up at 14-14 and went into overtime.
With his coach encouraging him to push through the pain, and his teammates exploding with excitement after every point, Lopez summoned the energy to fight for a win.
“I was shaking and starting to get tunnel vision but when I saw the entirety of my team cheering for me, it gave me the energy to have one more attack to win the bout,” Lopez, a junior accounting major, said. “I still think of that point whenever I need to push myself.”
While it started as just a recreational club for fencing enthusiasts, the University of Maryland Fencing Club has grown into a competitive organization, which competes with other universities across the country and is a founding member of the Baltimore-Washington Collegiate Fencing Conference.
Competitions range from meets tailored towards beginning fencers such as Chaos, which the club hosts, to high-level individual competition such as the Temple Open, hosted by Temple University. The club even hosts an Alumni Meet, bringing back club alumni as well as fencers from the university’s former men’s varsity fencing team. There is a little bit of something for every skill level.
Former Fencing Club president Ozzie Fallick got started in fencing with his father while in elementary school, but time and maturity prevented him from really getting involved with the sport. When he came to Maryland he decided to jump back in. But for many students, the Fencing Club is their first taste of the sport.
“We have fencers with very diverse backgrounds,” Fallick, a senior computer science and linguistics double major, said. “We have members who fenced earlier and lapsed, members who have never fenced before, and fencers who have fenced for years.”
Senior Sergey Plisov was one member who came into the club his freshman year without any fencing experience.
“I was at the first look fair and someone yelled to me ‘Hey, you should join the fencing club!’ So I guess yelling does work,” Plisov said, who was the club’s treasurer during his junior year. Three years later, Plisov says the fencing club has been a great experience during his college years and he intends to stay involved with the sport after graduation.
As the club moves forward, Fallick says that the club hopes to improve retention of members, which they are seeing success with, and increase competitiveness. Ultimately, their goal is to win their club conference championships and place highly at the club national championships.
While competition is an obvious focus for the club, forging bonds with fellow members remains one of the biggest and most rewarding experiences for participants.
“It think that one of the really appealing things about the club is the close group of friends forged in combat that comes with membership,” Fallick said, remembering his first Temple Open, when his entire team, dressed in Maryland red, gathered and cheered around him as he competed in the last round of the day. “That was when I really felt like part of a team.”
Lopez, the social chair of the club, says that members of the club throw barbeques, have formals and even have a paintball competition between squads at the end of the year. And while members compete individually in competition, they still remain a tight-knit group at the end of the day.
Occasionally, the camaraderie can even cross team loyalties. At last year’s national championships hosted by Michigan State University, teams prepared for the second day of competition when a song from the movie “Mulan” began softly playing on the loudspeaker.
“Naturally, I started singing along under my breath,” Fallick said. “By the end of the song, I could hear a soft chorus of voices furtively singing along from all over the arena. I thought it was a great way to start the competition.”
“As a member of the fencing club,” Fallick said, “I’ve gotten in shape, become an athlete, made friends, travelled, trained new fencers, run the club for a year, and been a part of something big.”
But ultimately, it is his memories in competition that will most define his and the other club members’ time with the club.
“There’s nothing like the feeling of winning for your school side-by-side with your teammates,” Fallick said.
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