Finally Fencing

By Kay Eldredge

Kay took two beginner lesson series with Coach Greg over the 2023-24 fencing season. This article captures her thoughts, feelings, and experiences.

A woman I know told me that every year she did something she’d wanted to try, without feeling committed to doing it. This year it was Clown School.

I immediately say, “Fencing,” I know it’s good for exercise and balance and there are strong elements of both the instinctive and the mental that come with anticipating your opponents. But I’d decided that, at 75, I was too old.

I, now a widow, was going to Colorado for the winter. My husband had died at 90, when I was a mere 67. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life making improvements on the old house he’d bought for $35,000 and that was now worth ten times that. I could live in it as it was, then Jim’s grown children would inherit it.

Inspired by my friend, I googled fencing classes. There were classes near where I’d be staying: three a week in Glenwood Springs that drew on towns along the I-70 highway, and two a week that pulled from Basalt and Aspen, further up-valley. Those were taught in the Red Brick Center for the Arts, once an elementary school in Aspen that our son had gone to. I called Coach Greg.

I’d imagined someone old, with a small grey ponytail. Yes, I could join despite my age and the fact that I’d never compete. He’d supply all the equipment. And I could sign up when I got to town. It would cost $200 for six individual lessons of twenty minutes each. It was going to happen.

Of course, Coach Greg was younger than our son – a mere thirty-six years old. He’d studied math at the University of Illinois and speaks unaccented English, though his last name is Domashovetz. He lives in Carbondale, in the Roaring Fork Valley. He’s good-looking, with a short beard and brown rumpled hair that makes him look like he just got out of bed. His competition now has to do with refereeing matches. His love of skiing and biking brought him to Denver after college, and he began to referee regional and national fencing. But he wanted to living in a place he had a passion for, and in 2017 he moved to the mountains. He’s the sole owner and coach of the Roaring Fork Fencing Club, named after the small river that runs through the valley.

One large room of the Red Brick has a wooden floor and mirrors along the length of one wall. Greg rents it for fencing. The light is good, as are the acoustics. It’s very different from the Arts Center in Glenwood, just past the Hotel Colorado, where insulated pipes run across the high ceiling and the brick walls are painted white. At the far end, a restroom has been enclosed. At the near end is a staircase that leads – up. The lighting is dim, and the acoustics are terrible. There are more girls here for fencing, as well as boys, drawing on a larger population. I’m attending an open house. This group has been fencing for about three years, and the girls don’t yet have breasts. But both boys and girls know how to hook up to the machines that are set to say who won the point.

In both places, the kids start out in their personal athletic clothes and then add to it. Greg brings everything to both places – gloves, foils, masks, plastic shields to deflect the foils, heavy white shirts and white leggings. He checks the sizes and zips up the backs of the protective shirts, and collects it all afterwards to launder, then sprays the masks with anti-germ disinfectant. This is after working with individuals who need extra help. Almost everyone learns first with a foil. I ask if he can tell who will continue, be good enough to compete. No, it’s impossible, Greg admits. “Some kids in the beginner class always look at their feet to make sure they’re doing it right. Others never do and simply fence as though they’ve always done it.”

First, they play dodgeball with a fencing glove to spend some of the energy they’ve accumulated in school. Then they practice advancing and retreating. I’m impressed that they already know their left from their right. They even lunge, which I don’t do for several lessons. “I want you to make beautiful lunges,” Greg tells them. This is the point of the exercise. If you lunge too far, you’re in trouble.” One of the boys always lunges too far and ends up off balance.

“En garde!” they call to one another. At first they don’t know what they’re doing. It’s all hit and miss, mostly miss. But they ask if they can wear and use all the gear by the end of their hour with Greg. He promises they can. And by the end, they have. They are satisfied and will be back in a week.

My classes are quite different. It’s not until my fifth class that I wear any protective clothing. Greg has worn it to protect himself from my foil, which I hold in my right hand, since I am right-handed. My right foot is ahead and I drag my left foot to meet it as I advance, or the left foot leads if I’m backing up. “You don’t need a more varied stance since in fencing, you only go back and forth,” he explains. As the lessons intensify, I sometimes wish we had more time to practice. At other times, it’s all I can do to keep up.

The masks have heavy fabric to protect the neck, but the front hatching can’t admit a foil. Yet you can see clearly through them. Greg starts to sweat as soon as he puts it on. I don’t. He does all this himself and only rarely with an older student who’s taken a private lesson. Starting about 3:30 on every weekday, he unloads his car of all the gear he’s carrying from one place to the other. He works year-round and has camps in the summers for locals and for those who want to do something themselves or have their kids do something. He teaches: beginning classes, more advanced ones, competitive classes with individuals, and those like me. Plus refereeing. Plus the laundry, of course.

“Wait until you see what your opponent is going to do,” Greg tells me. He’s spelled “parry” for the kids. You only parry – that is hit your opponent’s sword out of the way -- when you are backing up, that is defending. In attacking, you move forward and go around your opponent’s foil to strike. My opponent is Greg. Now we’re both fencing. Though not really. It takes a year of classes, Greg says, before you are really fencing.

It’s a graceful and gracious sport, whatever its beginnings were. All the terms are French, no matter where they’re used. It became an Olympic sport at the first modern Games in 1898. At the end of every match, he makes sure you salute your opponent with your foil before sweeping it to the ground. He demonstrates how that’s done.

As for me, I’m taking a second round of lessons, if he can fit me in. But I’m not going to compete.