How To Be A Fencing Parent (Part Two)
You have your book, you have your chair, you have a cooler full of water and good snack choices, your fencer is fully dressed out and ready to go. You think you job here is done right? Wrong! It has only really just begun. Unlike soccer, baseball, volleyball, hockey, and every other sport out there, fencing has one more little aspect that is especially difficult for the young fencer and it becomes a terrific opportunity for you.
Once the fencer gets to strip they still have to hook up into the reel. (That leash thing that trails behind the fencer connecting them to the scoring system.) You have a young fencer who may at the best of times just getting the hang of tying their shoes. Manual dexterity is coming, but they aren't winning Halo tournaments yet. Look at them, they are wearing big leather glove on one hand, they are holding a three foot long weapon attached to them by a wire, and they have a mask in their hand. Now they are expected to hook the reel cord to the D-ring is attached to the jacket...on the back.
Here we have two possible situations. Situation one, is pure painful comedy as the fencer drops their mask and tangles in their weapon while they attempt to twist around to get to the D-ring in the back. The farther they turn towards the back, the closer the D-ring comes to the front...on the other side. Most likely in the act of trying not to fall down they have accidentally kicked the mask two or three strips down. Meanwhile five minutes passes before the referee or coach from the other team feels sorry for the kid and hooks them up. Situation two, the fencer's coach or parent is right there with them. They follow the fencer up, give them a pep talk while they handle the reel cord thing and totally relaxed and composed the fencer steps up to fence with no embarrassment about the five minutes they spent performing physical comedy.
What fencing allows is something that is not allowed in any other sport. Parental participation. In all other sports you are stuck in the stands cheering. In fencing, you can be much more active. At higher level competitions you would be stuck on the outside of the railing, but you are still within six feet of your child. At lower level competitions you can hook them up and unhook them up until the point that they are old enough to be embarrassed by your presence. You can be there with kind words and a bottle of water with no problem. You can't argue with the referee, or you will be ejected from the tournament, but if you are the type of person who would argue with the referee, you are already used to being ejected.
For the young fencer you are in charge of the bottle of water, towel, extra weapons and body cords. When the fencer says "hungry" you say, "here's a snack". This is prime bonding time too if your career is the sort that limits bonding time on the weekdays. The chair and the book are for those long hours waiting for pools to begin and then the direct elimination to begin up to the point where your child is eliminated, or wins the event.
Now, your child is finished with the event, and for the sake of argument, since it is one of their first tournaments, didn't win first place in it. You could leave, and go get some real food, but why spoil a perfect learning opportunity. Once your child has gotten into some dry cloths take them back to strip and find the fencer who eliminated them. See what they do well, what works and what doesn't. The sting of loss can be whipped away easily when your child sees that the kid who beat them, walked away with first place! Even if they are eliminated in the very next match, it is a valuable lesson in what works, what doesn't, and how yours can beat them next time.
