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Four Years with HSS: 2018 in review

Another year has come and gone, and now we are celebrating the fourth birthday of Houston Sword Sports. It’s been a busy year with a lot of growth, and we are so proud of the work the club has accomplished. Take a look back with us at 2018, as we look forward to even more great stuff in 2019!

A quick overview

This year we added four new after-school programs: Saint Mary of the Purification Catholic School, Saint Cecilia Catholic School, The Post Oak School, and Mark Twain Elementary. We had four coaches go on to bigger and better things: Lauren Baker, Evan Register, Michael Dudey, and Caroline Dikibo. We also hired four new coaches: Brian Toffelmire, Julia Fowler, Hayley Gillen, and Nick Negron. We hosted six tournaments – twice as many as we hosted in 2017. Our fencers also attended more tournaments and traveled farther than they had before. Our classes and membership numbers are growing. Here are just some of our adventures from 2018.

January 27: Fencing with the Girl Scouts

Coach Liz and Coach Caroline brought fencing to the Girl Scouts at Camp Agnes Arnold. Be prepared to lunge!

February 17: Third Annual Brash Brewery Bash

Brash foilists

The third Houston Sword Sports Brash Invitational was a blast. Raise your hand if you had fun!

March 17-18: St. Patrick’s Day Tournament

The St. Patrick’s Day tournament was the first sanctioned tournament that Houston Sword Sports has ever run. Coach Liz 3d printed the medals.

April 13: Coach Caroline’s Last Day

Coach Caroline was our first hire. She was an invaluable member of our team, working in several schools and also maintaining our website. We were sad to see her go, but glad that she landed somewhere great.

April 28: Oscar Woolnough at the Wheelchair World Cup

Watching Oscar

HSS fencer Oscar Woolnough is also a member of the British National Wheelchair Fencing team. In April, he competed in a world cup in Canada. We got his bout to play on one of the scoring machine tablets and gathered round to cheer him on.

May 12: Spring School Championships

Fencers at the School Championship

We close each semester with our School Championship tournament. Kids from all over Houston competed to win individual medals and the Golden Mask for their school.

June 18: EnPointe Wireless Strip

In June we received one of the first wireless strips produced by EnPointe. This little device replaces reels and costs about as much as traditional reels.

Summer 2018: Summer Camps

Our summer camps continue to grow. This year we offered full-and half-day camps. In the mornings, we did foil; in the afternoons we did stage combat. At the end of the week, the kids put on a show for their parents.

August 18: Fete de Lune

The Fete de Lune is a long-running tradition in the Gulf Coast section. This popular veterans tournament is known for its fantastic medals and friendly atmosphere, plus a banquet after the tournament. We took over running the tournament from Clear Lake Fencing Club and had a great time. This was our largest and most ambitious tournament to date.

September 14: First Nerd Night

Not everything we do is so serious! In September we kicked off a monthly Nerd Night, a gathering of like-minded nerds to play tabletop games of various types. For our first Nerd Night we played Dungeons and Dragons. About a quarter of the 20-some participants had never played before. Asgard Games sponsored the evening and provided game materials and HSS-themed dice.

September 5: Demo at HCC Stafford

This was our second demo at Houston Community College. This time, the college’s TV station sent a crew to cover it!

September 29: South Texas Challenge

Our fencers traveled to more tournaments this year, and we started sending coaches to more tournaments. Here’s Coach Dan giving advice to Audrey Toffelmire.

October 11: Diana Caitlin Mayerich born

The newest member of the Houston Sword Sports family joined us a little earlier than expected. Coach Liz’s new daughter Diana is already being groomed for a great future in our sport.

October 20-21: The Swiss Open

In October we experimented with the Swiss format, which is popular in chess and Magic: The Gathering tournaments. We kept with the Swiss theme by offering fondue, and the prizes were Swiss cheese and chocolate.

December 1: Fall School Championships

The Fall School Championship was our biggest yet! Lycee International de Houston took the overall prize, the Golden Mask, for the third time in a row.

December 16: Eureka Heights Invitational

We closed the year with a new brewery tournament, this one at Eureka Heights. Our long-term goal is to have a brewery circuit of four to six tournaments in different breweries. Eureka Heights was a great venue, and a great step in that direction!

On to 2019!

This Spring we’ve added two more schools for a total of 12, and we’re planning to add even more in the Fall. We’re also adding more summer camps in more locations. We hope you’ll make Houston Sword Sports a big part of your 2019, too.

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Houston Sword Sports: Year Three

We held our first classes in January of 2015, which makes this month our third anniversary. Happy birthday to us! Check out our 2017 Year in Review.

January 31: Benoit Signs On

On January 31, Benoit Bouysset joined Dan and Liz and became an owner of Houston Sword Sports. Since then, he’s been at the helm of our epee program, our competitive fencing program, and our coach development program.

February 11: The Second Brash

Brash 2017

On February 11, we hosted the second annual Brash Invitational. We’d hoped to find cooler weather in February but were thwarted by record highs. Fingers crossed that, with this winter being colder in general, Brash 2018 will have nice cool temperatures.

March 3: Lease Signed

The batting cages shortly before they became a fencing club

On March 3, we signed a lease for our own space inside The Zone, a facility where we’d been having Saturday classes for about a year. We took over the back two pitching tunnels and the last batting cage.

March 7: Buildout Begins

Buildout for a fencing club means you haul both gear and lumber

A few days later, we got started turning batting cages into a fencing club. Here’s our first load of lumber. Since we were still running classes, we had to haul a lot of fencing gear too. Good thing we had a bunch of extra cargo room.

April 15: First Classes in the New Space

Fencing in our new location for the first time

On April 17, while we weren’t totally done with the buildout, we were ready to start having classes in the new space. I can’t actually find a date where we declared ourselves “done” with the buildout, because we are still adding and changing things little by little.

May 5: School Championships

May 2017 School championship fencing

Our first big event in the new space was our School Championship tournament. Fencers from our afterschool and evening classes came to see the new space and try their hand at competitive fencing. It was a great debut for the new space!

May 12: Grand Opening

Adult beginners prepare to fence

Our next big event was our Grand Opening. We celebrated the new space the only way we know how – with a fencing party!

June/July/August: Summer Camps

Campers at Bellaire salute

Our camps grew this year, and we met a lot of new people! We offered full-day camps for the first time, to make things more convenient for busy working parents.

August 24-28: Hurricane Harvey

The week after Harvey, we had free open fencing

The end of August was not kind to anyone in the Houston area. Once the storm passed, while the city was still starting to get back to normal, we had free open fencing a couple times to let everyone get their frustrations out.

September 15: Wieck Memorial

Over the summer, Stewart Wieck passed away. Stewart was one of our founding club members and a close friend of many years. In September we had a memorial with open fencing and a memory book.

October 7: Armory Clinic

Armory Clinic

We’re very fortunate to have a world-class armorer in our club. In October, Michael gave a clinic to help us better troubleshoot and repair our weapons.

December 2: School Championship

Y8 Fencers at School Championship

In December we hosted our Fall School Championship. Attendance was much higher: in Y8 alone, we had 23 kids! We also introduced a traveling trophy, the Golden Mask, for the school with the best overall result. Lycee International de Houston won the Golden Mask; who will win in May?

December 9: Light Saber Class

To celebrate the release of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we did a light saber stage combat class of our own. Participants learned the fundamentals of stage combat and then created their own fight scenes.

(Sad you missed it? We’re doing another on Feb. 9!)

December 29-30: Winter Camps

Winter Camp fun

We wrapped up the year with winter camps. Our youth camp was a full day, with fencing in the morning and stage combat in the evening. The adult camp was an afternoon full of tactics and techniques for competitive fencers.

And on to 2018!

It’s been a very full, and generally good year. We’ve added new classes and a lot of new fencers. We’ve added afterschool programs in two new schools and started working more closely with our college programs. There’s still a lot of room to grow, and that’s what we’re looking forward to in 2018. We hope you’ll be part of making 2018 bigger and better than 2017!

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Two Years at Houston Sword Sports

Hi guys, Coach Liz here.

January 2017 marked the two year anniversary of our club’s first classes. We had so much going on in January – from bringing Benoit on board to scheduling our summer camps, plus a few things still in the works – that we sort of forgot to celebrate. But let me say that the last two years have been a total blast, and I am so thrilled to see where things end up.

One of our very first practices at the Bellaire Rec Center, January 15, 2015.

When we first started, we were holding three classes a week at the Bellaire Rec – one kids’ class (for ages 8-18), one adult class in the evenings, and another in the afternoons. We also had two afterschool classes going – one of which, at Herod Elementary, is still going strong in its fifth semester.

Our first semester at Herod. There were about twelve kids.

 

Our second semester at Herod, there were almost twenty kids.

We closed our first year having seen huge growth. We went from two coaches with one scoring set and a nice website, to a robust club with enthusiastic fencers, four qualified coaches, three strips, and equipment for about 20 fencers. Some of our classes were small – many times, the teen class only had one fencer in it. But other classes, especially our evening adult classes, were about as big as they could get.

Camp Cutlass was a week-long camp we did in Galveston, in partnership with Galveston Fencing Club.

Early 2016 saw even more growth. We added two middle school classes through a grant with Citizen Schools. In February, we started holding Saturday classes at The Zone. Our first classes there were free intro classes and we had about a dozen kids and over seventy adults try fencing. Our teen classes grew bigger and so did our youth classes.

The crowd at our first Saturday class plays the Advance-Lunge Game.

In Fall 2016 we added a second teen class, so we now offer classes four nights a week at the Bellaire Rec, plus Saturday classes at The Zone. Every age group has at least three classes they can attend per week. We keep adding new schools, with a total of six after-school programs and several more planned for Fall 2017.

Kids at Presbyterian school practice the lunge. We started teaching classes at Presbyterian in Fall 2016 with twenty-three students – our biggest class yet.

Like I said in the beginning of this post, we have some really exciting stuff still in the works. As soon as we know more, we’ll be sure to tell you! We hope to do more of everything – more classes, more schools, more camps, more tournaments, and overall more fencing. Houston Sword Sports is growing. I can’t wait to see where we go from here.

 

 

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Fencing Camp Preview

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We’ve got two camps down in our summer schedule, and two camps to go. The next one starts on Monday and we’re getting excited! This one will be held at Westbury Christian School in southwest Houston and is open to all kids from grades 3-12. A summer camp is a great way to experience fencing for the first time. Kids learn the basic skills they need to start quickly and have a chance to apply those skills immediately. If you have a child (or are a child) who’s interested in starting this fun, fast-paced sport, camp is the perfect way to jump-start your fencing career.

So what can you expect at fencing camp? We like to change up the format a little based on the ages, abilities and interests of the kids in attendance, but we have an outline we follow.

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Each day starts with some fun games to warm up: sometimes simple games, like relay races; sometimes more interesting games like ultimate Frisbee or a dodgeball-style game called Zombie Tag. The goal of these games is to get kids moving and focused. Next, we move to conditioning – activities that increase the fencer’s coordination, strength, and speed. Then it’s time for footwork. On the first day, we teach campers the core building blocks of fencing footwork: the advance, the retreat, and the lunge. On the following days, we use these steps to create more complicated footwork patterns. We teach students to vary the size and speed of their steps, and tricks that will help them disguise their movement.

Once warmed up and ready to go, we help the kids suit up. New fencers are provided with the basic safety gear: chest protector, underarm protector, jacket, glove, and mask. Then, the campers get the one thing they’ve been wanting to play with since they first found out about fencing camp: the sword. Our beginner camps teach foil fencing, because the foil is lightweight (making it good for smaller fencers) and teaches skills that they can later translate into the other weapons.

We develop tactically over the course of the camp, day one focuses on simple attacks and the use of distance in setting up and defending them – it’s important to learn to use your feet to get you out of the trouble they got you into. Day 2 adds defense with the blade – the parry and riposte – and other blade actions. The rest of the week is about how to prepare these actions to make them more effective and some different variations on them.

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On the last day, we hold a tournament so the kids can put their skills to the test. We follow a standard USA Fencing format for the tournament: a pool, where each participant fences every other participant in a five-point bout; and a direct elimination tableau using the rankings from the pool. The fencers demonstrate how much they’ve learned during the week and get a taste for fencing competition. We also invite parents to observe the tournament, which provides for great photo ops and helps the parents understand what their kids have been learning all week.

Over the week, campers develop the basics of fencing footwork, bladework and tactics. They experience a variety of different drills and games to implement these techniques. And they fence in a tournament with the other campers. In all, campers get a great fencing experience condensed into one week.

Want to join the fun?

Westbury Camp: July 20-24, 1-4pm, $145
Westbury Christian School, 10420 Hillcroft St, Houston, TX 77096
Sign up

Bellaire Camp: August 3-7, 1-5pm, $195
Bellaire City Hall, 7008 S Rice Ave, Bellaire, TX 77401
Sign up

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