By Carla-Mae Richards
The past year has seen a change in direction with establishment of the North American circuit of events. This circuit was established to achieve a critically important goal—that of providing our top fencers with stronger competition throughout the season beyond fencing one another in a “closed event”. Why? It was done to provide a sounder base by which we could select our best fencers to represent the U.S. in major national events: World Championships, Pan-American games and Olympic Games.
Do we not have an even greater responsibility to improve the caliber of our best fencers in preparation for international competition.
We need to look at both our current top fencers and those who will comprise the future “top” fencers. We are limited in the amount we can do for our current top fencers. Although they CAN sharpen their skills, we need to recognize that major changes cannot be made to their fencing. At this stage, their primary need is increased exposure to international fencing throughout the year. Can we afford to do so?
We can become more concerned with the means in which we are helping the future top fencers. Do we truly assist them by sending them to World junior Championships on the basis of their performance in their peer group? Could we not better spend that money (cost of a full team to the World juniors) by sending the top two from the junior AFLA Championships to an International training camp during the summer? Are we getting the best value from our investment in the future of American fencing?
The USOC regards its backing of the under-developed sports as an investment. It needs positive proof that their investments are paying dividends. This can be shown only by acquiring medals or achieving improved international results. Medals not only provide the most positive feedback from the USOC’s financial support but, more importantly, act as our strongest lever for continual backing from this body.
Should one of our goals be ‘grass roots” development? If we review other sports, it appears that growth of a sport is directly related to the prestige of its top athletes. Prestige is gained by the prominence of top athletes in each sport. With the assurance that each sport has an international standing and that the US is a world power or has, at least, a substantial influence in the sport, the public becomes interested in that sport. With that interest comes participation—one need only to look at gymnastics and figure skating as evidence of this reaction. Public interest also stimulates the participation of our country’s youth—the means for developing a strong competitive base. In the US, we have a society and government which make it difficult to pattern our programs after the European/Russian models, but we can take advantage of our differences to adapt their methods to our way of life. With medals we gain publicity; with publicity, we gain the interest of the public. We cannot buy publicity; we must earn it by being newsworthy. And in sports, medals and winning are newsworthy, not surviving as an underdeveloped sport.
First and foremost, we must be concerned with survival as a sport, and not as a recreational activity. To survive as a sport, we must channel our efforts toward the means by which we will garner medals. To do this, we must commit our limited financial resources to our potential source of medals—the best of those in the junior and senior ranks. We must expose the few to the arena of top world fencing.
We have begun to hear what is available in Europe for our fencers. There is a summer youth camp in Italy, and a year-round training school in Germany. Perhaps we should investigate these for our fencers. Perhaps we should be willing to select that weapon or weapons in which we have the best potential between now and 1984, or even 1983, for we must not neglect the impact of the Pan-American games on our “prestige”.
We must take the time now to seriously re-evaluate where we are, where we are going, and where we must be by what point to survive!