Ryan ChartrandA good fencing team isn’t always what people think of when they look at Cal Poly sports.
Still, Cal Poly’s fencing club, though not funded by the school, is one of the best teams in the state, regularly beating NCAA teams in tournaments. Last year, Cal Poly took first place in a California all-club tournament. The team also placed second among 15 schools in the West Coast Invitational, a national tournament.
This year, the team is only a few points behind UC Davis to get the top spot once again.
No one knows exactly when the club was started, but the story, as told by head coach Eric McDonald, 49, is that the club consisted of four members and one set of basic equipment when he joined in 1992.
McDonald came to Cal Poly after a long background in fencing. In 1976, he and a few friends in Visalia became interested in fencing after seeing “The Three Musketeers.” They checked out their library’s only book on fencing and began to teach themselves how to fence.
“I whittled down a broomstick to the correct length and started to teach myself following the instructions in the book,” McDonald said.
Eventually, McDonald and his friends got their first set of equipment in Fresno.
Luckily for McDonald, New Zealand’s under-20 national champions moved to his neighborhood and began to teach him and his friends how to fence. McDonald later moved on to UC Santa Barbara, where he was the fencing team captain and began to coach after graduation.
He came to Cal Poly in 1992 to get his Master’s in business administration and helped the existing club begin to flourish.
From there, McDonald coached the club and developed the program to what it is today. Currently, the fencing club has between 40 and 60 active members at a time.
“The difference between us and the NCAA teams is that they get money and they recruit fencers who already have experience. Our fencers come to us with no experience and so in three years, we have to turn them around and get them to that level,” McDonald said.
On March 7, the club competed in the All-Cals Tournament at UCLA, where several members took top spots in foil, epee and saber individual and team events. The tournament, which is open to every college student who fences in California, will be held at Cal Poly next year.
The club is funded by dues, fundraisers, money made from tournaments and Associated Students Inc.’s sports club grant, which provides equipment for all of its members.
Providing for members is not an easy feat, since the sport is completely equipment-based and equipment costs hundreds of dollars.
All of its coaches are volunteers, many of whom are Cal Poly and club alumni, who teach everyone from the very beginners to all skill levels in foil, epee and saber. At any given point, there are about seven classes being taught.
Tim Baldwin, a mechanical engineering freshman, got into fencing during high school when he took fencing for high school physical education credit. He immediately sought out the fencing team when he started in the fall.
“It was one of the reasons I came to Cal Poly,” said Baldwin said, now the club’s historian and webmaster.
Mary Phillips, a city and regional planning graduate student, has been in the club for seven years. She first saw a flier for the club in her dormitory and said to herself, “I want to go.”
She now teaches the beginners’ class.
“I really like having the opportunity to give back to the club because I’ve learned so much from being here. I’m glad that I can give that to someone else,” Phillips said.
“The most important thing is that the fencers build camaraderie,” Phillips said. “We’re friends both inside and outside of the club. It’s both learning the sport of fencing and appreciating the sport as well as becoming friends and members of the team.”
Many of the club’s members and coaches were inspired to start fencing because of movies.
Nicole Bowers, now a Cal Poly alumna and a coach for the club, decided to join because she thought it would be much like the simulated sword fighting in movies like “Zorro” and “Star Wars.” Other members were inspired by “Princess Bride,” although most now agree that the majority of fencing in movies is highly inaccurate.
“It’s much better than (in) the movies,” Bowers said.
The fencing club meets in Mott Gym from 8 to 11 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday.