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Jul
14
2006
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En Guard! Lansing Kids Fencing Class |
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by Dan Veaner
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Friday, 14 July 2006 |
 Who hasn't watched a swashbuckler movie and become entranced by the sword play? Errol Flynn used to smile confidently while he thrust and parried as if it were merely a game he enjoyed. This August Lansing kids will get a taste of fencing in a two week course offered by the Lansing Recreation Department. It's being taught by Linda Wyatt, Prevot d'Armes of the Classical Fencing studio near Ithaca College.
"What we hope is that, by the end of the ten weeks they will know whether or not this is something they really want to do," says Wyatt. "We tend to attract people who don't have a lot of athletic experience, and specifically young women who read books that have swords in them, and they want to learn how to do it." Learning fencing turns out to be different from what they expect. "Fencing, is very unnatural," Wyatt explains, because your natural impulse is to cringe. "Everything you do has to be trained in from the beginning, and because of that people with a lot of athletic experience think they'll have an advantage, but they don't."
Wyatt trains kids to overcome that impulse. She teaches fencing as a martial art. Over the ten sessions she plans to give kids a foundation they can build on if they decide to continue fencing. "It's like kata in karate, the pre-arranged sequence of movements designed as a learning tool," she says. "It's easy to remember and it has all the basic skills in it that you need to be an excellent fencer."
Recreation Director Steve Colt says, "I see this as the same demographic as the karate program, the same kind of kid." He tried karate as an experiment at the beginning of the year. That program was a breakout success when enrollment doubled Rec Department expectations. That led to a second session, currently taking place. Colt wants another success. "My hope is to get enough interest to do it throughout the year," he says. "We're thrilled and excited to have it."
Wyatt began fencing herself in 1998. "Like most other people I thought swords were cool," she says. "You see movies, 'The Three Musketeers,' you know, swash-buckling movies. And the swords themselves are very cool." She took it up herself when she tagged along with a friend who had heard a fencing class was being offered.
"Little did I know that would change my entire life," she says. "I went to this class, and this man walked in and introduced himself as the fencing master, and I'd never seen anything like it before in my life. This... presence. It was very interesting. I started to learn about the sword, and basically I just fell in love."
That love affair grew as she began teaching about five and a half years ago, first assisting fencing master Adam Crown and then teaching her own classes. She largely teaches beginners, mostly children. "It's what I really enjoy doing," she says.
When you put a sword in a child's hand safety is of paramount importance. "They will be working with foils, but they will not be working with each other," Wyatt explains. "They'll exercise by themselves, they might do a little footwork with a partner, and they will probably get a chance to work with me individually for a few minutes just to see what it feels like to hit somebody with a foil. But they won't really be fencing with each other."
The class will be offered August 7-18, Monday through Friday at 8am. During the ten days they will begin to learn skills, focus, and confidence. They will also get to work with an instructor who clearly loves fencing and working with children. Wyatt says she likes to keep track of her students as they grow up. "I get very fond of them," she says.
And perhaps the experience will change some of their lives as it did hers. "I realized that that path to do something as perfectly as you possibly can refines everything else about you," she says. "It changes you. It makes you aim for excellence in all of what you do. It becomes who you are, as someone who endeavors to be excellent, precise in everything, and then there's the whole chivalry nature of the sword , benevolence, and honesty and integrity. I find it to really be a path to those things."
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