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First, the basics
Form and footwork are key to success in the sport of fencing. Writer Hastings Hensel (left), learns the basics from Edge of America Fencing instructor Patrick Lausi.
Photo by Mic Smith
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Ready, fence!
Bob Mones (left) and Coastal Carolina University student Zach Thornton, duel with epees at Edge of America Fencing.
Photo by Mic Smith
Editor’s note: When this story went to press in the January 2021 issue, South Carolina remained in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. Check with local clubs for the latest on classes and fencing meets. For the latest information on stopping the spread of the coronavirus, visit scdhec.gov/covid19.
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The masked swordsman attacks me with his blade, aiming for my vital organs—my panting lungs, my pounding heart. But I have been training in an ancient combat sport, so I parry him away, with my own blade, with a circular flick of my wrist. Then I riposte and lunge in, stabbing him once in his chest. When I push in the blade with more force, it flexes in a perfect u-shaped bend, as if angling into his flesh.
Only then does the masked swordsman remove his mask and reveal himself. He’s grinning—not like a man mortally wounded, but like a fencing coach approving the technique of his novice student.
The swordsman’s name is Patrick Lausi, and together with coaches Ian Dube and Annemarie LeDonne, he trains fencers of all ages and experience levels at the Edge of America Fencing club in North Charleston. One of more than a dozen U.S. Fencing member clubs in South Carolina, Edge of America, you might say, takes a double-edged approach. It is dedicated to promoting one of the oldest sports in the world while also building a competitive club whose members can compete nationwide.
“Fencing now is the biggest it’s ever been in America, and it’s only going to get bigger,” Lausi says. “Our job as a club has really been to build a community. Not just here in Charleston, but also in South Carolina. We’re trying to build fencing from the ground up. Our biggest goal as a club is to make fencing not only affordable for people but obtainable, too.”
Part of that goal, Lausi admits, is to squash the idea that fencing is a “rich person’s sport”—the leisure activity of snooty aristocrats using French terminology as they daintily twirl dainty swords. Edge of America seeks to bring fencing and all its benefits to the people.
“There’s no other workout like it,” Annemarie LeDonne says.
“I like it because it’s an individual sport,” says Bob Mones, the club’s veteran fencer and a former Pan-Am games champion. “That’s the joy of it—counting on yourself. You can’t blame someone else for screwing up.”
“There’s a lot of strategy in it,” adds Noah Kern, an 18-year-old who is one of the club’s best fencers. “It’s very much a mental struggle.”
Like Kern, who confesses that he got into fencing after seeing The Princess Bride, I, too, became interested in the sport by way of entertainment. Not, mind you, the swashbuckling Pirates of the Caribbean films, nor the slasher Kill Bill, nor the medieval and classical hero tales like Braveheart or Gladiator. Not even the monumental light saber-swinging episodes of Star Wars. Perhaps a little Game of Thrones, especially the scenes when Arya hones her sword-skills with the water dancer Syrio Forel. All of those, it’s true, contain great sword-fighting scenes.
But, alas, I admit—even if it seems to emphasize a stereotypical vision of the sport—I came to fencing because of my love of William Shakespeare. Romeo versus Tybalt. Macbeth versus Macduff. Hamlet versus Laertes.
Which, it turns out, makes perfect sense. Sword fighting and sword training have been around since the Bronze Age, and during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, sword fighting schools in Europe proliferated. After the invention of the printing press in 1440, so did sword-fighting treatises and manuals. But sword fighting evolved from a military exercise into a sport. The first known usage of the word “fence” occurs in Shakespeare’s play The Merry Wives of Windsor, when Abraham Slender tells Mistress Anne Page that he bruised his shin “playing at sword and dagger with a master of fence.”
Today, modern fencing encompasses three different combat sports, each with its own weapon—the foil, the epee and the sabre.
Foil fencing is the most popular with beginners. The foil is a lightweight and flexible sword, and a point is scored only when the blade-tip hits the torso area. With epee, a heavier sword than the foil, a point can be scored anywhere on the body. The sabre, which only has one sharp side, thrusts and cuts. It is often referred to as the most intense form of fencing, and points are scored only from the waist up.
“Sabre was fenced on top of the horse,” Annemarie LeDonne explains. “And what’s more valuable? The person or the horse? The horse. That’s why they kept it from the waist up, and why it’s a cut.” She makes a clucking noise like a sword slicing through a torso.
She tells me all of this when I arrive at Edge of America for my first foil fencing lesson on a Saturday in late February. The club is tucked within a nondescript strip mall bay, beside a Doscher’s IGA Food Store. You might think you were stepping foot into an old Dress Barn or Payless ShoeSource, but once inside, you see that the place is cleared for combat. Old fencing trophies and medals line the walls, but the large wooden floor is marked off with fencing pistes—the 46-foot-long strips where fencers clash—and you can hear the sounds of metal swords clink, clink, clinking.
Before my lesson, I watch two kids battle in a mini tournament, then a father and son duel each other as if in a Shakespearean comedy. The kids, to be fair, haven’t yet reached the sophisticated athleticism of the Olympic fencers I’ve watched on YouTube, but as soon as they hear, “Ready, fence!” they seem to be having the time of their lives.
Lausi, who also teaches fencing in various Charleston-area schools and satellite programs, says, “Most kids, they want to play with swords. They want to hit people. So, when they hear that you can kind of do that with fencing, they get excited.”
We walk over to the back corner, where I don the gear. I slip into the plastron, a kind of protective undergarment, and then into the jacket—both heavy cotton for muffling the hit of a blade. I pull the heavy glove over my right hand, and then the black mask over my face. Lausi hands me my weapon and leads me to the piste.
Lausi is a dedicated and serious coach. He first got his start in his hometown of Columbia at a local rec center, and he was soon addicted. When family friends gave him equipment from their son who passed away from cancer, Lausi began to really focus on the sport and to compete.
After moving to Charleston, he formed an informal “fight club” in 2012 for fencers to work out and hang out. People would come by, curious, and ask if they taught lessons, and eventually Lausi quit his job to coach fencing full time, merging two Charleston fencing clubs into Edge of America.
All this experience gives him the patience needed to coach tenderfoot apprentices like myself, and he’s stockpiled a bunch of useful analogies. He tells me to hold the foil with a loose wrist, like I’m carrying a cup of hot soup. He refers to the parry and the riposte as always going together, like mac ’n’ cheese. He tells me to land on my back foot when lunging, imagining I’m trying not to slip on wet grass.
He’s preparing me for my first battle on Open Fencing Night on a Thursday evening. The fight, it turns out, is going to be a tough one. I’m set to face Kern—experienced, fit, young—and I’ll be lucky to score a point.
Before the fight, I try my best to go through all the things Lausi has taught me. After the standard sword salute and then the thigh-pat to signal I’m ready, I squat with my butt down and my feet open in the en garde position. I hold the foil loosely, not opening myself up to easy shots. I make careful movements backward and forward. But I can tell Kern is toying with me. He is probably slyly grinning behind his mask.
He lets me in, and when I lunge—in my mind’s eye, as clumsily as a drunken bear—he easily parries me away and goes in himself, quick as a hornet’s sting, for the hit. The buzzer sounds. And sounds. And sounds. And sounds again.
Then it sounds, and I realize it has sounded for me. I can’t even tell you how I hit him. I’m pretty sure it was an accident. In the end I am, alas, beaten soundly.
But when I lift off my mask, I’m grinning. I mean, if it weren’t for the protective armor and dull blade-tip, I’d probably be dead, but I can tell by my pounding heart that I am fully alive. And this being the start of the coronavirus pandemic, we don’t participate in the customary handshake, but bump elbows instead. I’m embarrassingly sore as I walk over to Coach Lausi. He knows I’ve got a long way to go, but he’s encouraging.
“I always tell people that not everyone is going to be a fencer,” he says. “Not everyone loves getting hit with that blade point. But I think everybody should try it. It’s such a good sport.”
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S.C. Fencing Clubs
Edge of America Fencing
For $85 a month, members have unlimited access, including use of all equipment, gear, and facility space. Coaches offer lessons for a small additional cost.
Located at 1750 Remount Road, Hanahan.
Contact: Patrick Lausi or Annemarie LeDonne, (843) 410-9099; edgeofamericafencing.com
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Columbia Fencers’ Club
- Katie & Irwin Kahn Jewish Community Center, 306 Flora Drive, Columbia
- Seven Oaks Park, 200 Leisure Lane, Columbia
Contact: Dr. Jane Littmann (Head Coach), (803) 781-0056
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Foothills Fencing Academy1004 Piedmont Hwy., Piedmont
Contact: Judy McCarter, (864) 593-3684
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Clarendon County Dueling Academy
1794 Old Georgetown Road, Manning
Contact: (803) 460-6158; ccduelingacademy.com
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Clemson Fencers Club—Clemson University
252 Fike Recreation Center, Clemson
Contact: clemfen@g.clemson.edu
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Crossroads Fencing Academy
Inman
Contact: Sarah Mayes (Head Coach), (864) 590-9136; crossroadsfencingacademy@gmail.com
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lowcountry fencers
Island Rec Center, 20 Wilborn Road, Hilton Head
Contact: Patricia Wilkens, (843) 816-0756; wilkenspw@aol.com or the Island Rec Center, (843) 681-7273
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Knights of Siena Fencing Academies – South Carolina Locations
- 1314 Rutherford Road, Greenville
- 104 North Main St., Six MileContact: Alan Blakeborough (Head Coach/Owner), (864) 270-6172
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Summerwood Fencing Academy
2354 B Ebenezer Road, Rock Hill
Contact: Michael Edgecomb (Head Coach), (864) 648-9498