Burning the Novice Event & Pretty Warmup Pictures with Students.

I have to define a special Inland Empire tradition that is thankfully going the way of the dodo. Novice foil was the primary way to induct new fencers into competition throughout Montana & Eastern Washington. I really dislike novice foil for several reasons and it took a lot of work to get rid of it.

First I would like to give credit where credit was due, and oddly enough I am attributing the death of Novice foil to the USFA. They have a new policy where someone can buy a day membership to fence in a tournament. Novice foil ran outside the bounds of USFA, which means we had no insurance in case of injury, and people didn't have to wear knickers. It was convenient for people who weren't sure whether they liked fencing or not.

Second, I would like to point out the overall opinion of Novice foil in the hearts and minds of the people who supported it. It was mostly the good old boy network that really dug the idea of Novice foil, because they got to call the fencers in the bracket 'novices,' allowing themselves full privilege to lord their rank as full fencers over someone else. It was almost like a pathetic hazing ritual that most fencers had to go through.

Third, the DEs were only to 10 touches like a veterans event. Now, I'm not that old yet and don't know what it is like to fence for 15 touches while I am 40, so I'll give the vets bracket the benefit of the doubt right now. Speaking as a 25 year old runner in reference to Novice, suck it up and fence to 15.

Fourth, Novice foil only represents one blade. The only time we ever ran Novice for any of the other blades was last year. We are also the only ones besides Spokane who ran a novice bracket in anything besides foil. Speaking as a coach who stricly adheres to the philosophy that incoming fencing students should fence the blade(s) that they like the most, I think novice foil is unfair to 2/3 of all the possible competitors.

It came from the idea that foil is the 'base blade,' whatever that means. I still haven't heard a decent reason for why Missoula used to force students to learn foil before 'going on' to any of the other weapons. I know with complete certainty that I would never have fenced if I was forced into that situation. I also know that a few of the newer fencers would have bailed out too if the status quo wasn't changed.

In short, Novice events are no longer being organized in Missoula.

And now, for the moment you've all been waiting for... Warm up photos!