Holiday hiatus

The last day of practice before the holiday break will be Monday, December 22. We will resume practice starting on Monday, January 5.

Happy Holidays!

Upcoming Area Tournaments

Upcoming tournaments within a two hour drive of New Bern:

Dec 6 : CFFA (Wilmington) Mixed Foil and Mixed Epee
Jan 17-18: RFC (Raleigh) Mixed Foil, Mixed Epee, D & Under Foil, D & Under Epee, D & Under Saber
Jan 24: MID (Durham) Youth Saber events
Jan 31: CFFA (Wilmington) Women's Foil, Saber, and Epee
Feb 7-8: AAFC (Fayetteville) Mixed Foil
Feb 21-22: MID (Durham) Mixed Foil, Saber, and Epee, Youth Saber events

Also, if you are traveling over the holidays, you can use Ask Fred to find tournaments in an area near you! Stay tuned for news of our holiday schedule.

Photo Night December 1

At practice on December 1 we will take our annual holiday photo! Please plan to be present and in uniform at this practice.

T-shirts now ready!

I'm happy to announce that the club t-shirts are now available! If you pre-ordered a shirt, you may take yours home tonight for a mere $10. A limited number of shirts will be made available at our tournament for $15. Get yours this week so you can show your New Bern pride!

No practice November 3

This just in: There will be no fencing practice on Monday, November 3 due to our building being used as a polling location. We are still planning to meet Wednesday, November 5, but I will update this blog if I hear otherwise.

On another note, early voting is still open in Craven County until this Friday (October 31). So vote early and avoid the lines!!!

Homework and ECU Tournament

Need help with the homework from Monday? If someone to ask is unavailable, you can make use of some of the references on this page. Particularly, the "Beginner's Competition Guide" under Fencing Resources in the column to the right.

Also, many of you asked about the mixed epee tournament at ECU this weekend. This is their first official tournament and we hope to support them by sending as many fencers as we can! In addition, this is a very close tournament (less than one hour drive), compared to others in Raleigh and Wilmington. A good showing will ensure that they will hold more tournaments in the future. For more information, visit this page. Preregistration can also be done through this website. Please note that fencers must be 13 years old on January 1 of the competitive season to fence in open events.

Fencing in College

Parents, do you know that there are two college varsity fencing programs in our state? It's never too early to look into applying. To your right you will find links to both the Duke and UNC Fencing team websites which both have applications you can use to apply for more information. If your son or daughter is looking out of state, a complete list of colleges that have NCAA fencing programs can be found here. Top fencing schools include Penn State, Ohio State, Notre Dame, Columbia, U Penn, Harvard, Princeton, Northwestern, Temple, and Brandeis, among others. Attending one of the college meets at Duke or UNC would also be a good way to get an introduction to college fencing. If you have questions, please see one of the coaches at practice, and we'll be happy to help.

T-Shirt Orders

We are now taking orders for club t-shirts featuring the new Salle New Bern logo. Shirts are $10 and October 6 will be the last day to put in your orders.

Fencing Season Begins

Greetings new and returning fencers! Our first meeting of the season will be on Wednesday, September 3rd at our traditional location in West New Bern Recreation Center (the game room) at 7:30 pm. Click on the link in the column to the right for a map. Everyone is welcome!

Begining class wrap up

Well we reached the end of our begining fencing class. I feel the class was successful. We had two new students Conner and Tyler. Both were excited about fencing and seemed to pick up the lessons quickly. Both have said they are interested in joining the club this September. We also had three or more people show up that are interested in fencing and may come to check it out when the season starts. We would like to extend a great deal of thanks to Ron Burrows and Cornerstone Assembly of God for all their help and support. Also Meredeth showed up several evenings and helped.

Foil Class

Hello All,
I am putting the finishing touches on the beginning fencing class we will be holding at Cornerstone Assembly of God. The class will start Monday July 7 and run on Mondays and Thursdays from 6:30-8:00 pm for six weeks. Anyone wanting to help will be welcome. John will be helping and Marston will help with the final week of practices as I hope to finish with a litttle tournament for the class.

tournament wrap up

Hello All,
Our tournament last week ran smoothly and we had perfect weather. Everyone had a good time. There were quite a bit of supprises and upsets. Abby Esterly proved to be a major competitor. Not doing well in pools, seated only 17 and then eliminating the #1 seed in the round of 16. Marston represented our club well seeding #3 out of pools. Fencing very well until he was defeated by Don Scott in the round of 8, in a very close contest. Also worth mentioning is that Branham and Michael Talton did not fence each other in the DE's. The podium finishers were #1 Paul Perkins from Cape Fear Fencing Association, #2 Don Scott from Down East Fencers, #3 was shared by Micheal Kinney Cape Fear Fencing Association and Joseph Abernathy East Carolina University. Also winning the award for last person registered was Michael Doughty from North Carolina State University. The only criticism I received was that the bathrooms were not easily accessible. Other than that everyone enjoyed the venue at Jack's Island. We will have to discuss if we want to use that venue again. The complaint I have with the location is it is not accessible to regular pedestrian traffic. We need to decide for our outdoor epee tournament if we want to just consider a beautiful venue or public exposure.

Upcoming Tournament

Skirmish at Jack's Island May 31, 2008

The swashbucklers are invading New Bern. Come and join the fun. This is an outdoor event. Fencing will be on sports carpet over grass. Fencers going off strip will encounter different surfaces. In case of inclimate weather we wil fence at Cornerstone Assembly of God. Entry fee is $20.00.

Events Scheduled:
Mixed Epee 9:00 am start

Click on the Ask Fred link to register.