Fencing keeps pupils on toes

BY GREGORY PHILLIPS

DURHAM -- Their features hidden behind black mesh masks, the faceless fifth-graders lining the wall of the E.K. Powe Elementary School gym look for all the world like diminutive clones from a fantastic science fiction story. But they've donned masks, jackets and gloves to learn the noble art of fencing, a rare opportunity for kids their age and a chance to pick up skills that extend beyond the sporting arena.

"It's a great sport for training to be able to focus and think critically," said Duke University senior Mike DeMarco, who started the program last year with classmate and fellow Duke varsity fencer Allison Schafer. "Which is really the impetus behind wanting to do this."

DeMarco and Schafer started the program through the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership Initiative, set up in 1996 to improve the quality of life in neighborhoods surrounding the university.

With equipment bought by the Duke student-funded Durham Giving project and donated by Duke's physical education department, they approached physical education teacher Peggy Bennett about coming to E.K. Powe after a similar effort proved popular at Walltown Children's Theatre.

"It's a good opportunity for the kids to be exposed to some other sport than the basketball, soccer and football that they know of," said Bennett, who has taught physical education for 18 years and said she's learned a great deal from DeMarco and Schafer herself.

"It promotes discipline and it's also good exercise for the arms and legs," she said. "Some of the positions you get in force you to stand up straight."

When Schafer told the kids at a class last week they'd be putting on equipment for the first time and getting to face off against one another, the excitement was tangible. Jorge Iyesca, 11, punched his fist into his open palm with an eager grin.

"They get excited just putting on the equipment on," Bennett said. "That mask, it's like they're somebody else."

"We're real fencers now," said 10-year-old Aaliyah Scott as classmate Kaitlyn Wagner zipped up her jacket.

"Usually high school and middle schoolers do this," said Laniyah James, also 10. " It's really good that elementary kids get to do it too."

Fencing is an Olympic sport descended from ancient sword duels. Unlike those battles, which were won or lost with one strike, modern fencing involves scoring points and rewards speed and dexterity.

DeMarco and Schafer are teaching the kids foil fencing, in which contact with the torso is the only way to score points. According to DeMarco, that's what beginners tend to start with rather than the epée variety, which targets the whole body, or sabre, which involves cutting or thrusting movements.

Equipment in place, the kids practiced advancing, lunging and retreating with their rubber-tipped foils, first against the gym wall, then in pairs. They took turns to lead, moving back and forth in lines across the gym. DeMarco and Schafer moved among the group, correcting grip, posture and movement, and calming things down whenever the kids' enthusiasm threatens to boil over into out-and-out hacking.

"It gives different kids an opportunity to excel," DeMarco said. "No one had fenced before, so no one can get too far ahead."

To learn any kind of fencing puts the E.K. Powe kids in an elite group in North Carolina.

Kymm Ballard, physical education consultant with the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, said the state doesn't keep track of exactly which sports each school teaches, requiring only that certain skills -- running, jumping, hopping, throwing, catching and so on -- are taught. While she assumes there's a small percentage of districts that might offer fencing at the middle or high school, "I doubt there's any at the elementary school level," Ballard said.

DeMarco and Schafer are both from New Jersey, where fencing isn't as rare, and picked up the sport upon entering high school. Both Schafer's older sisters were fencers, while DeMarco was drawn to it because no one in the school had an early advantage.

"It was a sport where everyone starts off on level ground," he said.

The Duke team is nationally ranked, the men and women combining to place 12th nationally last year.

At the end of this year's program at E.K. Powe, DeMarco and Schafer are planning a weekend clinic, with fencers from Duke and UNC staging exhibition matches and a big competition for the school kids to show off what they've learned.

Kaitlyn's mother, Kristen Wagner, who also teaches at E.K. Powe, said her daughter is always ready to demonstrate her moves. But as a parent, that's not the benefit Wagner raves about.

"The different plus I see, not just the fencing, is for kids to be able to see students coming to our school as models of kids who went to college," she said.

DeMarco and Schafer are grooming some of their younger teammates to continue the program after they graduate.

"Otherwise I'm going to get out the equipment and do it myself," Bennett said.

David Stein, who coordinates educational programs for the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, is also a big fan of what DeMarco and Schafer have done, but that's no surprise.

"I'm a little prejudiced," he admitted. "Both of my boys fence."

Stein, who fenced himself, said he's used the sport in staff retreats, suiting up teachers and assistant principals and taking them through some moves.

"We used it as a way to talk about staying focused on your goals -- sometimes you move forward, sometimes you move back, but you stay focused on your goals," he said. "It's just an interesting way, if you'll pardon the pun, to drive the point home."

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