Intro To Tournaments: Getting a taste for the competitive journey in Olympic Fencing.

Dear fencing friends and families,

On Saturday, December 13th we will host an Intro to Tournaments event designed to introduce our beginners to the USA Fencing competition format. It is an actual competition with medals to the top four finishers preceded by a short lecture on best practices, the format of the competition and options moving forward. Its a very easygoing event.

Here is a more comprehensive tournament guide.

We will host two events: Y12Mixed (12 and under, girls and boys together) and Y14Mixed. While USA Fencing has strict rules about age an eligibility and men and women compete separately, our event is unsanctioned and we will offer some flexibility depending on your comfort level. If you're on the older side of Y12, we recommendf joining the Y14 event. The age and ratings seem complicated at first, but they are mostly irrelevant until you decide to compete more and we will guide you step by step at that point.

Fencing in the USA has two registration systems: USA Fencing membership for regional and national events and askFRED (Fencing Results and Events Database) for local and unsanctioned events. Please make an account on both, purchase USA Fencing "Access" membership at $29/year (make sure to claim for Cardinal Fencing Academy, there is also a Cardinal Fencing Club in California), then make an account on askFRED and link the USA Fencing membership. We highly recommend joining the CFA group chat, someone is always available to assist if you have any questions. This is enough to get started. If you plan to compete in regional events and beyond, your membership can be upgraded later.

Click here to register for our Intro to Tournaments event.

USA Fencing competitions are listed on Fencing Time Live, where you can see results as they are submitted by the referees.

In general, all USA Fencing events begin with a round-robin round where fencers are grouped into "pools" of five to seven athletes and fence to five touches. The result of this round determines your seeding into a direct elimination table. The better you do in the pool, the easier your path should be until the final DE bout. That is not always the case, as some more experienced fencers may have had an off day, and there have been plenty of exciting upsets.

Here is a guide for parents thinking about competing more. This guide is designed for higher level events such as the Regionals and Nationals, but we recommend taking a look at it sooner than later.

Here is a pre-competition checklist. We will provide all equipment for this event. Bigger events starting with Regionals will require personal equipment and the fencers name stenciled on the back of the jacket. There are always vendors at Regionals and above that can do that for you.

Penalties explained. The most common penalties are for equipment failures so you don't have to worry about it for now, but it's a good idea to familiarize yourself anyway.

We recommend trying our Intro To Tournaments even if you are simply fencing for fun or are very new, you never know what can happen! Practice is great for the technical and athletic aspect of sport, but only in competition can you develop the psychological and strategic aspect. Competitions can be super rewarding triggers for growth both as a human being and an athlete.

Hope to see you there!