I notice I write a little more about archery than fencing here but I teach both and my latest fencing session went well enough that I thought it deserved a post of its own.
My first session back in the hall with my Brownies after two years and two weeks didn’t go great. By the second week, I was kind of not exactly feeling in the mood for it. I’d deliberately ignored it for the whole week in between which meant I got up on Monday morning with no plans what to do to entertain five girls for an hour and half after work. Fortunately, I have a bag of swords and a pre-planned fencing lesson and as long as I’m willing to wrestle that bag out to the car, I can be ready to teach on thirty seconds notice. I intended to use it at some point before the summer but last week seemed to just be crying out for a spontaneous fencing session.
I did my British Fencing Core Coach Award in September 2018. It means I’m qualified to teach a taster session lasting about an hour, using plastic swords. Whether it actually covers me to use metal, I don’t know. I’m pretty sure I have no idea what the safety requirements are with metal so I wouldn’t teach it but I can’t find that detail in the small print anywhere.
I have one of the two bags of county kit. As far as I know, there are four fencing coaches in the county but one doesn’t seem to have made the outdoor advisor’s instructor list – to be fair, she’s our ex-county commissioner and seems to deal with first aid training single-handedly for the entire county because she’s an actual hospital doctor so she may not have time for fencing coaching. When I first approached county about borrowing the kit, the outdoor advisor gleefully said “I hate teaching fencing – you keep the kit and then you can do all the teaching!” It’s an attitude I’ve heard before. For a few months I was employed by (but never taught at) an outdoors centre and their archery/fencing coaches said the same thing. They like archery but not fencing. I like teaching archery too and it’s been so long since I did a fencing session that I thought I agreed with them but my fencing lesson with my Brownies went so well that I’ve realised I actually really enjoy both and I’m going to be messaging the rest of the district to offer my services.
The county kit is a big black bag that just fits in the back seat of my Fiat Panda. It’s huge and it’s unwieldy but it’s not as heavy as it looks. Not quite. Not far off, though. It contains twelve plastic swords, twelve masks and twelve protective bibs. Yes, I tried running a session for sixteen last time I did it with my Brownies back in about 2018. It didn’t go well. Worked great for five this time though!
My current Brownies are… well, they’re seven to ten in 2022. They have short attention spans and their parents have never said no to them. I was dreading the one particularly princessy one to refuse to wear the mask. Can’t play swords without it. Don’t have enough adults – or plans – to do something else. If she refuses, the entire session is scuppered. Luckily, it hasn’t crossed her mind that the masks can be a bit claustrophobic. I find if you tell them in advance that the masks can be a bit scary, more people will be scared of them. I’ll tell you what’s good about them though: I can post photos of the sessions on social media because the masks make them unrecognisable to the point of absolute anonymity! In fact, once I’d masked and bibbed them, I struggled to identify a couple of them right there during the meeting.
We went out in the garden. I still prefer to wear a face covering inside but I can’t teach fencing from behind one. Anyway, it gets hot bouncing around in masks and bibs so outdoors is always my preference even in the before times. There’s a softish bouncyish not-tarmac area outside – you know, that stuff they use for the floor at playgrounds – and that made an ideal salle for the session. Stand on the grass if you want to take off your mask, no swords outside the salle. (Tennis happens on courts, football on pitches and fencing in salles. Strictly, that’s the room and then each pair fights on a piste, which basically is the long thin mat but I thought we’d stop at salle for Brownies.)
We started with footwork. Forward, backward, lunge. You teach them the three steps and then you play forwards-and-backwards. Stand in the en-garde position and I shout “Forwards! Forwards! Backwards! Forwards! Backwards! Backwards! Forwards! Forwards! Lunge! Back! Backwards!” and they do as I say, one step per shout. You do have to explain that eventually. “Forwards!” does not mean shuffle towards me as quickly as you can, it means one step with your front foot and one step with your back foot.
Then I did my warmup activities, Rats & Rabbits, and a sidestep circle run. I should have started with them but it’s been a while and I forgot and you might as well introduce the absolute basics first. Yes, the footwork is more of a basic than the swordwork and you do have to explain that it’s front foot back foot front foot back foot and the back foot never comes forward but they did grasp that pretty quickly. The footwork wasn’t pretty until much later on but as long as it was roughly right, that’s a good start.
Rats and rabbits is a concentration game. You get them lined up back to back. One lot is “rats” and the other lot is “rabbits” and you yell “RRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAA-” and both sides brace themselves to run and then you pick either rats or rabbits and they have to either run to home or turn and catch the runners. The circle run is just getting their muscles away – sidestep round in a circle, then the other way, then add in other actions until everyone is warm and sweaty and ready to run around, which is when you’re supposed to introduce the other games.
Never mind. Next up came the kit. I have six white bibs and six black so I brought the white ones out and put the black one on me. They’re all the same size so there’s no arguing over it. In 2019, I did a Father’s Day session with another local Brownie pack where the big burly dads and their seven-year-old daughters wore the same kit and that was quite hilarious – dads bursting out of them while Brownies tripped over the bottoms. You put them on a bit like painting aprons – arms through the holes, velcro round the back of the neck and then there’s an elastic strap with a clip to hold the bottom closed and stop it flapping. If these were metal swords, you’d probably have long sleeves on them but you don’t need that with plastic swords so you can have your arms exposed. I tend to recommend long sleeves because you will get whipped by a plastic sword being whirled too frantically so I made a point of explaining that swords don’t whirl. Next, the aforementioned masks. They have a padded fabric neck covering and a mesh across the face and they work a bit like old-fashioned bonnets, in that they don’t go on top of your head like a hat but on the front of your head. Then you adjust the elastic strap at the back so it doesn’t fall straight off.
Once they’d put the bibs on and tried the masks, it was time for the exciting bit. Swords! Real metal fencing swords have a slight curve to them but plastic ones have a huge curve. Frankly, they look ludicrous. You hold the sword with the droopy end pointing down. Then, when you hit someone, the point stays where it landed and the sword flexes, whereas if you poke them droopy end up, it’s very easy for the point to slip upwards and jab your partner in the neck. It’s not going to kill or maim them but it hurts. I demonstrate this on myself because kids understand things better if they’ve seen them in action. Then I demonstrated how being hit correctly with a sword doesn’t hurt. I didn’t entirely mean to ask consent from each in turn to poke them in the chest with a sword but somehow I heard myself asking “Annie, can I hit you with the sword? Betty, can I hit you with the sword? Clara, do you mind if I poke you with the sword?” and once I’d realised I was doing it, I might as well continue. And they all agreed that it didn’t hurt at all. That’s a good starting point for a lesson because even though they’re wearing padded bibs and using plastic swords, they often cower instinctively away from being hit, so I like them to know from the start that it’s ok to get hit. I also whipped myself on the arm and hand to demonstrate what not to do with the swords and also “look, see how it’s going red already? It’ll hurt so that’s why you shouldn’t do that and also why you should keep your spare hand behind your back”.
And finally, 1265 words in, we get to wave the swords around. I taught them to hit – yes, come and prod me in the chest with them, prod hard enough that the sword flexes. Good. Then I taught them to parry. That means to hold your sword upright and use the base of it to push aside their opponent’s sword. I should have stopped there but I decided to teach them their third move. Now, I can’t remember the name of it because it’s been so long but it’s a parry and then, while your opponent’s sword is pushed aside, you whirl your sword underneath theirs and jab at their bib. Parry and riposte, perhaps. The trouble is, there’s never quite enough strength, especially in a demonstration, to actually get underneath the sword so what the girls see is just sword-whirling.
So we practised hit and parry in pairs and then parry and riposte. I had five girls and I was paired with Betty, who’s my anxious one who also turns into my over-enthusiastic one once she’s been there twenty minutes. Then I had to swap her in and out of the other pairs so I could give the other girls some attention and what I realised is there are a few major errors they’re making. They’re not going backwards and forwards, they step to the side to avoid their opponent’s sword and before you know it, they’re circling frantically and crashing into other pairs. That one is best dealt with one-to-one, by fighting with many “you’ve gone to the side again – back in front and then come at me again!”. The other major error is that they’re holding their back arm in front. I get it, it’s a protective instinct to protect the most vulnerable part of their body. But in this case, that part is wearing a padded bib and the arm is unprotected and will hurt if it gets whipped so I have to hit myself again to demonstrate that it’s red and that they need to hold that arm behind their back. I try to teach them to hold the back arm out, either up or down, for balance but while their instinct is to hold it in front, we have to go back to plain “keep it behind your back”.
So I got them back into line and we played footwork again but this time with arms clamped behind their backs. Footwork’s a little better now, which gives them enough brainspace to remember the arm. Then we picked up the swords and had another go at our three moves. Then I thought I’d give them a bit of free fight time. They know their five elements – three moves, footwork and arm – and they just get to jab away at each other.
It got hot and tired and some of them left the salle to sit on the grass and take the masks off and get their breath back. That’s fine. We’re supposed to be having fun and if they’re hot and tired, it’s not going to be fun. I’m not the sergeant-major here and I’m not drilling them for Olympic victory, we don’t need to carry on whatever happens, so I sat down with them and we chatted about their weekends, checked in (“are you all ready to go again? No? Ok. Annie, sit down, the rest aren’t ready yet”) and eventually got back to it.
By the second break, my youngest three had lost interest. I’d held them for over an hour and that was a major victory and they were quite happy to sit under the trees or run around a bit. Running around randomly and yelling while I’m trying to do something is really annoying but this was fine. They’d done their work and they’d done it well and had a good time. Quit while you’re ahead. Meantime, Annie and Betty still had their enthusiasm and they love fighting with Brown Owl. So we did some more fighting and some more “you’ve gone off to the side again” and then I took them back to absolute basics in some mini one-to-one lessons, whereby I explained that you’re not supposed to be just whipping that sword and you’re meant to be going for me, not my sword. So we did hit and parry again and I made lots of enthusiastic noises and praised their footwork and then we scored some points off each other.
Those two oldest enjoyed it enough that I had to admit that they now knew everything I know about fencing. I’m trained to deliver a very basic session and if you want any more “tricks”, here’s where you can find a local fencing club. I doubt if they will but I was delighted they were having so much fun and that I could get past the instinct to just hit and beat me down to get to the bit where they’re trying to actually fence correctly.
To finish, here’s a thing about being a Brownie leader. Kids love to beat up their adult so much more than to beat up each other. It’s far more fun for Betty to take on Brown Owl than to take on Diana or Ellie. The same goes for other activities: it means so much more to hit the red at archery if Brown Owl only hits the black or to climb the tower faster than her. That’s why I’m a big advocate of adult leaders getting involved. If the leaders are scared of doing something, it suggests to the girls that there’s something to fear. If the leaders do the thing, it gives the girls an extra push to try harder to beat the leaders and be better at it than them and it makes their achievements feel bigger. With only twelve sets of kit (and I need one for myself, so I’ve really only got eleven), it’s often hard for the adults to take part in the fencing but at least they can all get a turn with me, and I can use it to personally correct each of them and encourage them lots of times “come at me! Come and hit me!” Once they’ve had the one-on-one hit-and-try-not-be-hit, they seemed to go into defensive mode so there was lots of encouragement to go on the attack.
Besides, that kind of more intensive interaction is a good bonding experience. I’m the kind of leader who wants to be right in the middle with my girls rather than standing aside and above them and in particular, spending a lot of the session fighting and coaching Betty was really good for her confidence.
I’ve emailed division to ask if anyone else wants a session and I’ve already got my next one booked in!