TMFC in Collegiate Fencing

Many TMFC fencers participate in collegiate fencing after their start at Tim Morehouse. Fencing in college enriches student experiences and can be a fantastic outlet for students to make connections. Our fencers have gone on to compete for Yale, Columbia, Notre Dame, UNC and Brandeis amongst other colleges.

Read more here.

This past weekend, TMFC fencer Michael Parkhurst competed in his first collegiate tournament fencing for Drew. He went 5-1 for victories during the day, helping lead the sabre team to victory. Congratulations Michael on your first collegiate event! We’re so proud to see our fencers continue to thrive in fencing!

Read the full article here: https://www.drewrangers.com/news/2021/2/6/mens-fencing-fencing-teams-open-season-with-mini-series-versus-sacred-heart.aspx

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Missing Mom at Mission

Missing Mom at Mission

By Zack Brown

Mission Fencing Club hosted an RJCC in mid-November and allowed ONLY fencers into the venue - NO coaches and NO parents. While this is the norm in Europe - where parents typically don’t accompany their kids to competitions (it’s more like a class trip for them) - it’s an experimental covid-precautionary rule here. What did people think about this tournament? Here’s a look from the perspectives of a referee, a fencer, and a parent!

Referee:

For me, the tournament was wonderful. Mission, led by Jeff and Jenny Salmon, are always on top of their game hosting quality events. I felt incredibly safe with the limited numbers. As refs, we were told to always use hand signals with our calls and not to double strip because cameras corresponded with specific pools. When spectators were allowed in the previous event, they were not permitted on the fencing floor at all, but that just ended up with close gatherings in the designated areas (not in the ref room… no one wants to hang out with us anyway). Overall, the tournament was controlled and calmer without the pressure on the fencers from coaches and parents.

Fencer:

Athletes at the event appreciated the feelings of safety and reduced stress, but at the cost of competitiveness. One fencer pointed out that, “Normally, parents and coaches yell at their fencers to encourage them, but it leads to a certain pressure to succeed.” However, she added that without that pressure, she felt less driven and motivated. Maggie Shealy, Brandeis sophomore, portrayed the setting as “ominous.” Typically, chatter between fencers flourished, but she found she didn’t approach anyone unless they were about to fence. Maggie felt a void of usual intensity: “Fencers derive a lot of their energy from spectators, fans, and teammates… without [them] cheering it’s kinda challenging to formulate some external energy.”

Parent:

Before the event, parents were informed that camera numbers would be posted online with the pool and DE assignments. This way, the whole family could watch athletes from the comfort of their cars (as comfy as a Civic can be). Luckily, an accommodating Starbucks nearby permitted all the parents to gather and use their Wi-Fi, which facilitated virtual spectating. Aria Bevacqua’s mom, Amy, was “a little apprehensive about leaving [Aria] there by herself, but the wonderful thing about the fencing community is that all the kids are so helpful and kind, and a lot of the older girls looked out for her!” I, personally, saw a similar camaraderie in the athletes and how they stepped up to be each other’s strip coaches.

Overall:

I’m always a huge fan of Mission Fencing Club and their tournaments. This radical change made me like them more for being so proactive with precautions in epidemic times. Everyone I talked to, like Amy Bevacqua, missed having coaches there, but felt the event was, “quite good and… would have no problem continuing tournaments in this way for as long as necessary.”

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College Fencing - What's Best For You?

College Fencing: The Drawbacks of Division 1 

By Zack Brown

The biggest reason people do fencing is to get into a good school (or because you actually ENJOY fencing… NERD!). Too many people rule out smaller schools because of their fencing teams!

While the reveries of joining an NCAA championship team are appetizing, there are some cold, unsavory truths to consider when looking at the school you’ll spend 4 years of your life fencing for. 

It’s not going to be pretty, but here are some deets to deliberate on when weighing your college teams of choice!

Realistically: 

Most people are NOT going to get a scholarship for fencing! 

Unless you are on the national team (for the USA, not just... Siberia), a full ride to any high-powered athletic school for fencing is going to be out of reach. Fencing isn’t a lucrative sport, so even partial scholarship availability is going to be QUITE limited to very specific athletes (unless you’re at Harvard……. Or is it too soon to make that joke?). 

If you are on that short list, fantastic! Enjoy free money! Otherwise, consider smaller schools like NJIT or LIU, both of which have programs where their coaches (Jason Henderson and Ivan Lee, respectively) can grant TONS of scholarships to athletes. 

Realistically:

The big teams are STACKED!

The teams that typically win NCAAs (Notre Dame, Columbia, PSU) have a LOT of people gunning to be on their starting lineup. There are only 9 bouts for your weapon each match. Unless you’re a consistently impressive starter, you will have to choose: Do you want to juggle strip time with 10 other competent fencers and spend most of the matches as a cheerleader? Or do you want to be the superstar on your team and fence every match? Look at how Tim Morehouse left a LEGACY at Brandeis!

Weigh the bout opportunity of a smaller team roster versus becoming a faceless sparring partner at a big-name school. Is a potential championship ring worth not ACTUALLY fencing?

Realistically:

Most people are NOT going to fence after college! 

At the last Div 1 I fenced, I counted 8 people in the field of 170 who were out of college. Along with the hefty price tag, fencing is VERY HARD to do recreationally without a strong club nearby. Unless you are fighting for a national team spot, the justification to continue fencing past graduation becomes harder to find when there’s not an endgame. 

Put your hard work in now, but be cautious about picking a university PURELY for fencing when you might not pick up a weapon post-graduation. 

Realistically:

Decide what’s best for YOU!

Choose your college because it FEELS right! Whichever school you pick, the camaraderie and adventures you’ll experience with your team last a lifetime. The low-stress environment of a club team is as much fun as the intense focus needed in every bout of NCAA fencing. Select YOUR right fit. You’ll love the college fencing trip regardless of the path you take. 

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TMFC Foil Open Jan 9th 2021 Results

What better way to start the year than a fencing tournament?

Over the weekend, Tim Morehouse Fencing Club hosted a Senior Mixed Foil event with Tim Morehouse foilists killing it. Here are the results:

Special congratulations to fencers Finn Hossfeld, Richard Li and Gerald Wang for earning new ratings in 2021!

Looking forward to our next one! Keep up to date on our upcoming tournaments by checking out our tournaments page: https://www.timmorehousefencing.com/calendar

4 Ways to Keep Fencing Fun and Safe in the Age of Covid

As our nation considers another round of lockdowns, we at TMFC thought we should share our list of 4 ways to keep fencing safe and fun in the age of Covid-19

Number one: Purchase athletic, reusable, washable, masks.  Brands from Adidas and Nike all the way down to the tiniest Etsy craftsman are designing better, more comfortable, more stylish masks every day.  

Number two: purchase multiple sets of masks!  Keep extra masks in fencing bags, in the car, in your gym bag or locker, wherever you have easy access to.  There is nothing worse than traveling to practice only for a mask to break, be forgotten, or left out of reach!  

Number three, and this is for coaches as well as for parents: make reminding students to cover noses and faces a matter of fact delivery – no drama aloud!  Everybody loses track of their noses from time to time, especially children.  But if being told to “cover your nose” becomes normalized, fixing a mask stops disrupting practice, keeps everyone safe, and keeps everything running smoothly.  

Number four: Make Covid specific rituals at the club.  Each ritual will have to be discovered organically and be appropriate to the look and feel of each club and community.  Personally, I have picked up my father’s penchant for over dramatization, the occasionally made up word or phrase (He loved reading Dr. Seuss to me when I was little), and self-deprecating humor.  So, perhaps unsurprisingly, I have found myself shouting made the made-up phrase: “Squirt-Squirt!” to signal time to wash hands.  “Mask break!” has replaced water break – after of course training children to walk outside and social distance before removing their masks.  And the ritual that I had the least control over: the Sabre Shake.  

The Sabre Shake was developed by our students at the club.  After I explained to a particularly bright eyed eight year old named Sophia that we don’t shake hands at the end of the bout, little Sophia took off her glove, stuck it on the end of a sabre, and offered it to me as a replacement for her hand.  Very quickly everyone in class followed suit and started offering their gloves from the end of a sabre (and within social distance parameters), and a new ritual was born.  It required a quick reminder about the importance of not waving even a gloved sabre around at an unmasked teammate – but you can understand how much fun the children had with their new habit.  

These recommendations are of course not the end all be all – they are simply a starting point for making the best of the terrible, no good, rotten virus.  But if we can turn safety practices into fun, lighthearted rituals, then we might be able to make it through the coming winter.

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Congratulations to Our Class of 2025 Fencers!

• Ella Bordell was accepted to Wellesley College

• Alex Mckee was accepted to Brandeis University

• Catherine Flanagan was accepted to Duke University

• Richard Lin was accepted to Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Way to go fencers! Everyone at the club is so proud of you!

Pictured: Alex McKee and Richard Lin

Tim Morehouse Fencing Club Begins Covid-19 Testing For Its Students and Staff

Tim Morehouse Fencing Club has partnered with Mirimus Laboratories to test TMFC students, coaches and staff for Covid-19 infection using a saliva-based PCR pool testing system. These tests will be conducted on-site at TMFC locations beginning in December, 2020.

Tim Morehouse Fencing Club will be one of the first, if not the first fencing club in the country, to provide regular Covid testing for its members and staff. The club will be testing its coaches and staff weekly in addition to 100 members across varied class groups weekly with pool testing.

When Will Testing Occur?
Generally, we will select one day each week and test 4 different class groups for Covid-19 while they are at the club.We will try to notify members on Sunday before the start of a week which day of an upcoming week will be tested and we will rotate days so that over the course of every 3-week period we will test about 85% of the in-person students.

If the need arises, we can focus testing on a particular cohort if we are informed that a particular student has had an exposure elsewhere.

We will not test anyone that has not submitted a consent form.

About Mirimus Inc:
Mirimus, Inc., a leader in conducting high-volume, high-quality PCR testing, is now in partnership with Tim Morehouse Fencing Club to enable weekly COVID-19 surveillance testing of all staff and students using its pioneering SalivaClear COVID-19 pooled saliva testing platform. The SalivaClear platform is composed of three key elements – saliva-based sampling, pooled testing and gold-standard PCR molecular diagnostics – that, when combined, enable frequent, high-quality, high-throughput, low-cost detection of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

About Saliva Testing:
Saliva-based sampling is simple, safe and noninvasive, and is just as effective as testing nasal pharyngeal swabs, according to studies conducted by Yale University. Unlike intranasal swabs or blood samples, saliva samples can be easily and painlessly self-collected without the need for needles, nose swabs or medical personnel.  Pooled testing entails combining a small volume of saliva (200 microliters) from up to 24 individual samples to create a single specimen for analysis. A diagnostic is then performed on the entire pool. If a positive test occurs, the pool is narrowed into 12 pools of two to pinpoint the positive individual(s). 

Is this test accurate?
Saliva-based pool testing has shown to have been as accurate as nasal swab testing in studies by Rutgers University and Yale University, with no false positives and only 5% of positives being reported as negative. So there is a 5% chance a positive person could report a negative test when they are in fact positive and only a very minimal possibility of false positives. 

Source:
https://www.mdanderson.org/cancerwise/do-covid-19-coronavirus-saliva-tests-work.h00-159384312.html

Who Else Is Using This Test?

The Hackley School, USA Olympic Speedskating, Notre Dame University, and numerous other groups, professional sports teams, universities and team organizations are using this testing process with great success.

How Are Samples Collected?

Saliva testing sample self-collection is simple, safe, and noninvasive and requires no doctor or nurse on-site. Students provide a small vial of saliva that is bar coded, and we send the saliva overnight to the testing lab; the results will be provided to TMFC within 24-48 hours. 

At the club, under our staff’s supervision, students will be provided with a kit that includes a saliva collection straw. Students will provide a small amount of saliva, seal it into a plastic bag and then deposit it into the testing receptacle. The tests from that day will then be overnighted or brought by carrier to the lab for testing. 

What Happens at the Lab?
At the lab, the individual samples are pooled into groups of 24, after which Mirimus utilizes the FDA Emergency Use Authorized ThermoFisherScientific TaqPathCOVID-19 Combo RT-PCR Kit in a modified method to test each pooled sample. The pooled test results are typically reported to WPS within 12-24 hours of sample receipt at the laboratory. If a test is positive, the pool of 24 is split into 12 pools of two,

What Happens After They Test?
Once the lab has tested the saliva group, it will let us know that there are no positive tests or indicate that there are positives within the group. We will either inform a testing group that everyone is negative or we will inform the group there is a positive within their cohort.

If there are positives within the cohort, we will immediately inform the individuals in the cohort, and we will then need to take the next step and have the lab isolate the positive tests within the group to identify the infected person(s).

Who will we test at Tim Morehouse Fencing Club?
We currently have the ability to test about 100 students and staff per week, so we will be able to test about 85% of the club over every 3-week period, with a focus on student groups who attend the club on multiple days each week.

We will do spot testing of various cohort groups each week. Also, if  the need arises, such as someone reporting their child has been exposed to Covid-19, we can then target our testing at a particular group to learn if there has been any community spread.

The lab will only be getting barcodes and not any names. We will have student names and bar codes at the club so there is a certain level of anonymity. 

All students must have a signed consent form from their parent or guardian to be tested.

For More information please email info@timmorehousefencing.com