An Open Letter to the Trent Fencing Community and Interested Parties. To begin with, by way of introduction my name is Doug McLean. I am a Trent alumnus and a former Trent University Varsity fencer. For me fencing at Trent and representing Trent on its varsity team was one of the high points of my university experience. I wish for that experience to be available for others presently and long into the future. This is my point of reference and the impetus for addressing what I believe to be legitimate concerns with respect to the current situation facing the Trent Valley Fencing Club. In addition, after many years away from the sport I am now a member of the Peterborough Fencing Club and active in competitive Veterans fencing tournaments in and around Ontario. This is a highlight of my middle aged life and I also wish for that experience to be attractive and available to others. My narrative, such as it is, picks up at the point in time when Trent Fencing lost its status as a Varsity Sport at the University. This news arrived as quite a shock to fencers at Trent, and their dismay was heightened by the decision of Trents longstanding fencing coach to withdraw his services in support of that group. To their credit several members of the fencing community at Trent made the effort required to form a new organization aimed at maintaining fencing activity at Trent. Trent Valley Fencing was established as the vehicle for this and the club organizers have been successful in gaining TCSA support for their operations. Co-incidentally a number of students involved with fencing at Trent were also members at the Peterborough Fencing Club. At this time PFC accelerated its efforts to forge constructive ties with the Trent fencing community some of whom had been taking advantage of the opportunity offered by PFC to train and fence at its facility free of charge. It was the view of the clubs owners, Scott Nichols and Michelle Curran, that what was good for Trent fencing was good for fencing in the wider community. Sadly, since that time the potential of a constructive relationship between PFC and Trent Valley Fencing has remained unrealized as a result of strategic errors and mistrust. As a result, in my opinion the development of Trent Valley Fencing has been adversely affected and potentially realistic expectations for members learning and progressing in the sport have been compromised. As Trent Valley Fencing began to organize, PFC began to inquire about how they might be able to support student fencing at Trent. An agonizing series of conversations emerged over a period of weeks and months with the end result that all overtures from PFC were eventually rebuffed. Ultimately in the proceedings, a fencing club with little or nothing in the way of qualified coaching staff turned down extensive and repeated offerings of coaching, technical support to the student fencing group from a nationally qualified Level 3 fencing coach with years of very successful OUA coaching experience. If it matters, the street value of the services PFC was willing to offer was in the order of $10,000. Despite many efforts to convince their executive members to the contrary, the persistent theme at the heart of Trent Valley Fencing concerns seemed always to be the idea that PFC wanted to take over their club. Even recent efforts at outreach from PFC to Trent Valley Fencing have been unfruitful. Aimed at fostering some goodwill between the town and gown fencing folk, some support for beginning fencers at Trent has been offered by PFC weekly at Trent Valley practice sessions. However, PFC has reached the conclusion that even this level of support seems to have been problematic for those in charge there to receive, and this too has come to an end. For the most part I have been on the sidelines in all of these comings and goings. At the centre of my perspective is the opinion that fencing is a wonderful sport for young and old and should be celebrated and promoted in both the city and campus venues. To be fair it should be stated that I have consistently and actively supported views that coincide with my own, but I have always maintained the hope that entrenched positions could be moved towards some sort of compromise and that a realistic consensus would emerge concerning the challenges inherent in managing and organizing a vibrant fencing club at Trent. Ultimately, for two seasons coaching support for Trent Valley Fencers has been taken on by two volunteer coaches who, to the best of my knowledge have no training or certification as fencing coaches. At the practice I attended as part of a PFC delegation, the training ratio was 2 (or 3?) to an estimated 40 fencers. This seems odd given that I am personally aware that at least two members of the club actually have some certification and experience as fencing coaches. As far as I know they have not been asked to share this expertise, and one has been the subject of recent, quite harsh disciplinary sanction at least in part as a result of having offered coaching advice to club members that the volunteer coaches did not endorse. As a means of heaving some less co-operative ideas out of the way, perhaps the origins of Trent Valley Fencing would serve as a useful starting point. There should be no mistake that the formation of Trent Valley Fencing was a great accomplishment. It was the result of a genuine enthusiasm for the sport that those previously connected with Varsity fencing at Trent took it upon themselves to throw their shoulders to the wheel and bring into existence a new organization that would serve a noble purpose. The mission statement is completely appropriate... The Trent Valley Fencing Club was founded in 2013 to continue to (the) legacy of fencing at Trent University after the Varsity program was cut. The Trent Valley Fencing Club functions as a competitive OUA team attending tournaments from October to March. It runs as both a competitive team and a club for those wishing to pursue the joys of fencing without competition. If I dont miss my guess on the subject of Trent Valley Fencings creation, from an emotional standpoint those responsible for getting fencing back on track at Trent invested heavily in that process. And at some point in time they happened upon a day when the entity they had aimed at creating came into existence. There it was right in front of them. They are due appreciation and congratulations for that. Subsequently they rose to the challenge of seeking and gaining financial support for the club. Another hurdle, another success! The saga continues, in fact, and with every challenge of this nature, small and large comes an expenditure of effort and worry. To date things have gone passably well. There is an active membership of old and new students seeking the fencing experience, some more ardently than others. There are equipment challenges which involve doing a lot with little in the way of resources. And there are the technical challenges of offering instruction to beginning fencers as well as offering refined training and tactical advice to those seeking the challenge of tournament competition. From my vantage point, the simple truth that confronts Trent Valley Fencing at the present time is that, despite the noble accomplishment of having forged a club out of nothing and the continued enthusiasm for the sport demonstrated by the executive, the demands of serving the realistic needs of the club and its members is now larger than the club can manage with its present resources. This is less evident in the areas of recruitment and organization of a club membership, and most evident in the area of instruction and coaching. While there may be some on the executive who harbour designs of becoming coaches at some point, the present needs of the membership, in particular those seeking a competitive pathway exceed what can be provided for even at this early stage of the clubs history. I would ask the members of Trent Valley Fencing Club, and particularly the executive members of the club to consider the following ideas: The mission statement of the club describes serving the needs of both the recreational and the competitive fencer. This is a laudable goal and I believe it to be appropriate and achievable. However in considering how the club will achieve that mission I would ask that you point out any reputable and successful OUA fencing organization that does not access qualified professional coaching to direct its technical program. Yes, its your baby. Yes, you deserve a ton of credit for bringing it into the world. But a mature, realistic assessment of where you are also says..... Yes, its already grown beyond your ability to provide for it adequately. Chartering a bus doesnt qualify you to drive it down the road. Saving fencing at Trent didnt turn any of the interested parties into fencing coaches. The appropriate view is that saving fencing at Trent turned those interested parties into the organizers and leaders of the Trent Valley Fencing Club. As its leaders your mandate is to maximize the potential for the club and its members to achieve its mission and this involves taking the necessary steps towards building sustainable successes in the sport both at the recreational level and at the competitive level. Its not my place, my intention or my role to question your dedication to achieving success in the undertakings you have begun. However, what I sincerely believe is that the blush of your initial success in having re-established fencing as a going concern at Trent has had an impact on your ability to correctly identify the consequences of your achievement. There comes a point in time when you have to recognize that the key to serving the needs of others involves the realization that you cant be all things to all people. Knowledge of ones own limitations is a fundamental characteristic of successful leadership. Its time to take a mature, responsible view of your situation. The first result of doing so will be that you will begin to talk about and ultimately find ways to manage aspects of your need for control over your “baby” and commence the process of bringing in from outside the kind of technical expertise the club needs in order to achieve its mission. The second result will be that you will run, … not walk, but run back to the discussions you need to have with PFC (or some other suitable entity) as a means of getting access to the technical expertise you need to bring into the club in order to adequately serve the varied of needs its membership. To be sure PFC is not the sole source of such expertise, but under the circumstances it is certainly the first place I would recommend looking as a source for the assistance you need. Given Scotts recent decision to return to a coaching role at Queens University, in the short term this relationship will be problematic for the remainder of this season. As soon as possible though, I would strongly encourage you to resume a dialogue with PFC aimed at the 2015-2016 fencing season. In the interim I believe there are measures that may assist you in addressing the needs of your membership more effectively, particularly the corps of beginning fencers. The first of these measures would involve focusing your instruction on the sequence of skill and knowledge acquisition as described in the CFF Armband program. While you may elect not to utilize the Armband program in its entirety it is nevertheless a very sound resource upon which to build a set of introductory fencing experiences. My second suggestion involves distributing the responsibility for delivering instructional components within your practices as widely as possible in the areas of footwork and tactical blade work. To accomplish this you would need to deputize some number of the experienced members of the club to teach specific skills to smaller groups, (4 or 5 being ideal numbers) and rotate those groups through an appropriate number of stations during practice. This would go a long way to ensuring that feedback was more immediate and accurate than can be achieved in a one or two to many scenario. There are undoubtedly more suggestions to be made in this area. I have written all of this from the point of view of an interested bystander. I am under no set of illusions that my opinions will be of much value to those who dont agree with me. As stated at the outset though, I wish only for the experience of fencing at Trent to be as enjoyable and rewarding for present and future fencers at Trent as it was for me in my day. For this to occur, though, I am convinced that the leadership of the club needs to address fundamental issues related to the acquisition of coaching and technical expertise for the benefit of its membership. If the executive can do this sort of self-examination and re-assessment, that would be great! Given such an initiative Id think that an optimistic view of the future of fencing at Trent would be quite reasonable. If you cant do this; if you cant manage this kind of rigorous assessment of the club with respect to its present and future prospects of achieving its mission I would ask that you seriously consider resigning your current positions, in effect, giving way to folk who would be more likely to ask for the help the club needs now and in the future. I hope I have not wasted your time, or mine. Sincerely, Doug McLean Trent 76
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 23:01:24 +0000
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