Is it harder than golf? Is it harder than soccer? Well, Cathedral Catholic’s head fencing coach, Stuart Lee, believes so. After coaching UCSD’s NCAA fencing program, Coach Lee describes fencing in its basic form: “Your opponent is standing literally six feet from you, and the tip of his sword is traveling at nearly 100 miles per hour toward you, and you have a millisecond to block his attack and return fire.” Sounds complicated or intense? It completely is. “The tactical game is as deep and varied as chess, and the dynamic nature of the sport puts an incredible load on your body,” Coach Lee said.

Fencing consists of thrusting weapons or slashing weapons. Different weapons are used in each of these different sections. A thrusting weapon, épée is most like a real duel with very few rules. Both players can score a point at the same time. However, foil, the other thrusting weapon, is a bit more complicated. While using a foil, only one player can score at a time, so a referee is present determining who scores the point. All three weapons, épée, foil, and saber, a type of slashing weapon, are used in both NCAA and Olympic levels. “All scoring is electrical with lights and buzzers if you touch someone, kind of like a video game, but with a lot of sweat,” Coach Lee said. Despite all the thrusting or slashing, fencing has one of the lowest injury rate of all Olympic sports, even lower than ping pong!

After a couple years on campus, fencing has been growing larger. First time fencer Jamison McLaughlin said, “I joined because of my sister and a couple of my friends, but it is also a sport about sword fighting. How cool is that?” On the other hand, there are some more experienced members on the team, such as senior, four-time Cathedral fencer, Joey Toczylowski.

Consisting of about 20 males and females, Cathedral has had a active varsity team. Although it is not one of the most popular sports, Cathedral’s team is still quite notable. In the short past, Cathedral has had some notable fencers, a couple who continued their fencing career in college. “Thomas Fiechtner, who graduated in 2010, founded the fencing club. He has always been one of the top five fencers in the city,” Coach Lee said.

Cathedral has also had a couple top women fencers, one by the name of Taylor Walsh. “She was a women’s saberist who not only won the women’s saber title every year she fenced for Cathedral, but also went on to beat all the guys to win the men’s title as well. . . She fenced in many National events and is still a nationally ranked athlete,” Coach Lee said. In the past seasons, Cathedral won a couple titles and continues to work hard to do so this year.

The expectations this year for Cathedral’s fencing team is to build a team for the future. Almost half of the team are freshman who never fenced before. The other remaining fencers on the team are second-year returners and a couple third and fourth year returners. “We fence both in the Winter and Spring seasons, so we are still looking for new blood to add to our mid-sized varsity team,” Coach Lee said. Coach Lee and his assistant coaches are first of all looking for perseverance from his new recruits. He wants all his players to work hard because he knows personally, that in order to fence well, it takes confidence and hard work. “Any new recruit should know that it takes years to excel at fencing,” he said.

From this topic, Jamison said, “I expect to better my reflexes, agility, and strength, as well as growing stronger bonds with my teammates.” Both inexperienced freshmen fencers and experienced Senior fencers have expectations for the upcoming season. Joey, one of the Seniors who will try to pursue fencing in college, said, “I expect to have more teammates compete in competitions, as well as the team to expand with underclass members to continue to fence.”

The team practices at Cathedral on Thursdays for an hour, focusing on agility and conditioning. However, on Wednesdays and Fridays the team practices for an hour and a half at one of the top fencing centers in San Diego, Team Touché Fencing Center in Sorrento Valley. “It’s very cool to be able to hook up electrical equipment and have all the hitting pads, targets and equipment we need to train right,” Coach Lee said. The coaches work their players hard, but they just want to make sure that they have fun overall. Jamison said, “I also love conditioning classes as a whole because, hey, it’s always nice to spend some time outside after school just moving around and having fun.”

The coaches, in the end, work by one simple fencing adage to make their team the best: “The Master can hand you the sword. . . it’s up to you to make the edge sharp.”