Garde-ian

Fencing requires total focus. So does coaching the ever-changing sport.

BY GENEVIEVE TRAINOR

Iowa City Fencing Center founder, director and head coach Judy O’Donnell moved to Iowa in 2000, when her husband took a job at the University of Iowa. Ten years later, after advising for the university’s club fencers and taking on more private students than she had room for, O’Donnell opened the Fencing Center.

“You can only have so many holes in your basement ceiling before you have to do something!” she said, with a laugh.

O’Donnell fenced on her college team at Wellesley College, moving to Germany after her graduation in 1982 to train intensively at a fencing center there. She fenced in several World Cup competitions, between 1984 and 1991. In 1985, she began coaching children through the Boston Fencing Club, starting with one 5-year-old boy and growing her student base from there. That boy was Davis Merritt; under her training, he went on to win

What’s In a Blade?

President of and coach at the Iowa City Fencing Center Judy O’Donnell stands flanked by her young students during a break in their practice. Gabby Estlund / Little Village several national championships and is now the head foil coach at that same school.

“There’s a funny story,” O’Donnell said. “We were at the national championships, [I was] coaching some of my students. And sometimes the coaches will chat together. And he came up to me, and said, ‘As soon as I looked over and saw who the other coach was, I knew we were going to lose!’”

O’Donnell fell so in love with coaching that she went back to school, earning her Masters of Education at Harvard University in 1988. She’s been teaching and coaching since. She teaches students of all levels of in Iowa City, across most brackets of competition age categories, with varying goals for their studies.

The sport of fencing employs three different styles, each utilizing a slightly different type of sword.

Foil is the typical beginner weapon. It’s light and quick, with a rectangular blade shape. The style evolved from military training; the blunted blades were used as practice weapons for smallsword fighters. In sport fighting, points are only scored with the tip of the weapon coming into contact with the opponent’s torso. Women’s foil fencing was introduced in the Olympics in 1924, 28 years after men’s fencing, and remained the only version of the sport women could compete in at the Olympics for the next 72 years.

Épée is the largest and heaviest of the three weapons. It has a V-shaped blade and a larger bell guard than a foil. The style is most similar to traditional 19th-century dueling. Like foil, points can only be scored with the tip of the blade and in a thrusting motion. But in épée fighting, there are no right-of-way rules and the entire body is a valid target. Also unique to épée, body-to-body contact is not an automatic offense, unless it is particularly brutal. Women’s épée was introduced to the world championships in 1988, eight years before it was approved for the Olympic Games.

Sabre uses the fastest, most aggressive style. The weapon, which evolved from a naval cutlass, has a knuckle guard that curves over the hand and connects with a pommel to the bottom of the handle, rather than the bell-shaped style of the other swords. The blade itself is Y- or V-shaped ending in a rectangular point. Points can be scored with a thrust using the tip, as in foil and épée, or with a cutting movement using either edge of the blade. The entire upper half of the body (including arms and head) is a valid target. Like épée, sabre fencing was long considered too violent and aggressive for women. The first official competitions for women in sabre occurred at the 1999 World Cup, but was not added to the Olympics until five years later.

“Some people just want to come in for an hour of class a week, have a good time, get a little exercise and have some fun,” O’Donnell said. “Other people want to go to national championships.”

She answered a some questions for Little Village about her practice and her business.

What would you say is your favorite style? Are you more foil, épée, sabre? Well, each one is very different as far as the target and the rules and the way it’s played, and the way you think about it, and how you perform it. They’re all fun. … At first I did foil because back then women were only allowed to do foil. And then women started being allowed to do épée, so I did that. I did a little World Cup foil, but most of my World Cup was in épée. But women still weren’t doing sabre back then, so I didn’t get to do a lot of sabre competition. But I think all three are splendid; I teach all three.

Aside from the variety of opportunity for women, what would you say has changed on the world scene in fencing, between your time competing and now? What do you see when you watch the current competitions and look at the current competitive styles? It changes over the years, they kind of cycle through things. You kind of go through one style and then it disappears because everybody figures out how to deal with that, and another comes along, and people figure that out. So it changes a lot.

Fencing has gotten a lot more athletic over the years. It’s gotten a lot faster. The electrical scoring equipment allows for touches to happen so quickly that sometimes you don’t even see the hit. … So it’s quite a bit faster than it used to be. Americans are doing a whole lot better than we used to do, too! The U.S. is having a lot of international success.

My next question [is] about the mental component. What sort of training do you do, especially for young kids, to cultivate that ability, that focus and that stillness? Sure, yeah! Sometimes we have certain games we play in the classes that will help develop that kind of focus. Also with my junior team, that’s for the more serious kids, and during the junior team training sessions we’ll spend part of the hour doing mental things, mental training aspects … relaxation training, each session a little bit of that.

… Aspects of mental training are really

THERE’S ALWAYS SOMETHING FUN TO DO

important to competing and really important to being able to enjoy life, in general. I’ve had lots of students come back and tell me they’ve applied what they learned in the mental training to other aspects of their lives, and that’s always really nice to hear. … I do some mental training with fencers besides my students here … I’ve also worked with equestrians in the past, and people who are involved with other sports.

Is fencing ever used therapeutically, for kids who struggle with emotional regulation or anything like that? Yeah, we’ve worked with some kids who’ve had problems like that, and even some adults. One of my most favorite moments of coaching: I work with a lot of kids who are autistic, who feel much more comfortable when they have a fencing mask on. And I remember after a parent-child class, a mother was crying in the corner, and I asked, “What’s the matter, my goodness?” And it turned out her son had looked for the first time. Looked directly at her through the fencing mask. She said, “I finally got to see his eyes.” It was a very moving moment.

A fencing class, for kids like that, gives time to relax, build confidence and self esteem, and we can build that up. It’s really good for a lot of different things. I’ve worked with a lot of kids who’ve had issues. People who are ADHD, they learn to focus more. Because if you don’t focus, you get hit! It’s pretty simple: you’ve got to pay attention to the person in front of you, trying to poke you. So they develop focus, without anyone nagging at them to develop focus.

Do you feel like fencing is embraced by Iowans, generally? We do a lot of two-hour Introduction to Fencing classes—we offer that twice a month, so people can find out what it’s all about. And so often, when I explain to people that no, we don’t fence with sharp swords, they give a sigh of relief. People are thinking that we’re going to fence with something sharp, and that it’s really dangerous … We don’t fence with anything sharp. Everything that we wear is designed for safety. I think that’s one of the myths that people don’t understand. A lot of people think it’s an elite sport for rich people only, and that’s not true. We keep prices quite low, we provide all the equipment. So there are a couple of those myths that we’re still trying to break through. We’re the only club for the public in Eastern Iowa, then there are three clubs in Des Moines and there’s one in Sioux City, and both the University of Iowa and Iowa State have clubs for their fencers. … There’s not a lot; it’s not like every town has a fencing place in Iowa. But it’s growing bit by bit.

I would love to see lots more people coming in and trying it, hopefully sticking around and doing more of it. There’s so many great benefits to fencing; it’s a great stress relief. When you’re fencing, you can’t think about anything else. When you go to the gym and work out on the treadmill or whatever, you carry all your worries in the back of your mind.

I’ve got people who’ll drive two or three hours for an intro class … I always feel bad that, here they are, they fall in love with it, but there’s nowhere for them to do it when they go home. So I’d love to see more clubs springing up.

At our facility, people are very welcoming. It’s a really friendly group of people that enjoy the time that they spend together and the time they spend fencing. Everybody seems to care about everybody else. It’s a very nice culture that we’ve developed here. … If somebody’s looking for that opportunity to make new friends, have some fun and get some exercise all at the same time, fencing is a really nice thing to do.