[Wrencytet]

Greeting and respect to all of you. If your reading this I can belive you have studyed a sword fighting style.
As I have. I am a high school sabre coach. I have been teaching for 13 years. I was a competing fencer in my 12 to 39 years of age, I won many medals and took 18th place at summer nats. div and sectionals champion many times.
I learned how to fence and made many friends from around the world, I spent a year in japan and had a friend who had a black belt in kendo when I was in the marines. He was very nice and showed me his skill and gave me his friendship.
His name was sgt Deheart I belive he marryed a lady in Japan. I wish him great happyness.
As to the display of rude behavior in fencing. Some of it is true, we have people who display shameful behavior and great skill. We have coaches who do the same. We do not give rank belts for pure knowledge, it is your abilty to win that gets you rank an A rating or B rating and so on down to E, and then U unrated. A being the highest, and then you get points for getting on a us team for where you place in Nat meets. As a adult and a coach I train my students to be respectful and honest. Is there cheating going on in fencing sure - a judge who likes one fencer more than an other could give him a point or match. We catch them once in a while and they get hell for it up to being remove as a judge, Do fencers get call
on unappropriate behavior, yes they can get yellow red and black card, which are warning, point for the other fencer and a black card gets them removed from the meet. or if it's real bad out of the u.s.fencing assoc for life.
As for the yelling Sabre is the most active loud weapon We yell. we get excited and we scream for our guys and get happy and sad and boo and do all that. I am very proud of my team boys and girls. Hugs are part of our makeup. Our kids cry and shead tear of happyness and sadness, But My friends I think they would be your friends too They would love to fence you and share a coke or icecream with you, They can see and know skill when they see it. They are proud of their sport as you are. you show respect as they do. I get hugs and tears and my fencers get mad as anyone when they think they are disrespected. yes we have fencers who do nuttey things like toss their mask but did you know you get a black card if you do and you are out of the meet then. and If I am your coach your in deep dodo. don't shake hand at the end of a bout black card out you go and again your walking in the smelly stuff. But if you think you should have won a match and the judge was wrong and you have tears in your eyes and your mad and your 16 years old I am going to give your some space and try to get you talking and back to normal. We are human and we fence because we love it and in sabre I want my kids to be excited and have fun. your style is for combat and you train for it ours is a game with game rules and we
plan to get the kids up for the match and bout. if you were fighting my guy you would have 79 other kids yelling for our guy to win thats a lot of stuff coming at you. your fighting our support and our guy. get your own guys yelling for you.
and at the end of the day on the way home on the team bus they talk and bond for life when they are 89 they will talk about the championship they help our team win. and when I die I can see all the faces of my kids an smile.
cause they bring life to our fencing, i share tears and smiles on their way to college. and they came back and see me ever year. I have them then their kids. I hope you have a bond as strong as ours.
I saw a video of a kendo disarm in sabre it would be called a bind. we would do it with one hand your use two cause you hold your sword with two same move. I would yell my head off if you were my guy and did that. great job.
in the video the people who were watching did too. So maybe we are not so different, we fence because we love it and we make friends and fight hard. And if you look for rudeness you will find it but if you look for friendship it will be there.
we have good fencers with hot tempers and we have good fencers with golden hearts. we are people like you.
Godbless you all
Coach gandy