Quality over Quantity. How we coach Young Fencers
Why We Coach the Way We Do
Walk into many fencing clubs and you’ll see a familiar scene: a line of kids waiting for their turn with a coach who has already given ten lessons that day and has ten more to go. The coach is competent. The lessons are technically fine. But something is often missing — the spark, the attention, the sense that this particular child, in this particular lesson, actually matters.
Great coaching looks different.
Coaching as a craft, not a job
The best coaches don’t think of fencing as work. They think about it on the drive home, in the shower, at dinner. They remember which fencer struggled with their parry-four last Tuesday and come in Wednesday with three new ideas to fix it. They know who has a math test coming up, whose grandmother is visiting from out of town, who’s been quiet lately and might need a check-in before warm-ups.
This isn’t a customer-service script. It’s what happens when coaches are genuinely obsessed with the craft and genuinely invested in the kids. It can’t be faked, and it can’t be scaled past a certain point — which is why the next thing matters so much.
Protecting a coach’s energy on purpose
There’s a strong case for capping the number of private lessons a coach gives each day. At larger clubs, it’s not unusual for a coach to give fifteen or more private lessons in a single day. By lesson ten, even the best coach in the world is running on autopilot. The corrections get vaguer. The eyes glaze. The fencer in front of them becomes interchangeable with the last six.
A child deserves better than that. A good lesson comes from a coach who is fully present — sharp, energetic, and genuinely excited to be there. A tired lesson is a wasted lesson, and fewer good lessons will always beat more mediocre ones.
It helps to think of it the way you’d think about a private company versus a public one. A public company answers to growth — more members, more lessons, more enrollment every quarter. A smaller, privately run club can answer to something else entirely: the development of each fencer in the room. There’s nothing wrong with a large club, but size changes the math. When the priority becomes volume, coaching quietly turns into a numbers game, and in a numbers game some kids inevitably slip through — not because they lacked talent, but because no one had the time to notice what they needed. Keeping a club deliberately manageable is what makes a genuinely personalized approach possible, so that every fencer has the chance to reach their real potential rather than just make up part of the count.
Competing to develop, not to collect medals
There’s a temptation in youth sports to push kids into tournaments early and often. Trophies look good online. Results feel like proof that something is working.
It’s worth seeing it differently. Youth tournaments are training tools, not measuring sticks. A fencer should compete when they’re ready — when the experience will build their confidence and mental toughness, not crush it. A child who gets thrown into high-pressure events too early often learns to fear competition. A child who’s introduced to it gradually, at the right moments, learns to love it.
The long game is the cadet and junior years, when results actually start to matter for college recruiting and national rankings. Everything that comes before then is preparation for that window. A thirteen-year-old who’s hungry and confident is worth far more than a ten-year-old with a shelf of medals and burnout on the horizon.
The bottom line
There’s no shortcut to developing a great young fencer — or a great young person. It takes coaches who care deeply, lessons given with full attention, and a patient approach to competition. It isn’t the most efficient way to do things. But it’s the approach that actually works.
