Titanic Open: Here's The Setup
It was with some excitement and apprehension I walked into the Coleman Research Gym that dark and rainy night. It was a space I knew all too well. The UNCG Fencing Club was born in that space, and the last time I had anything to do with fencing at UNCG it was in that space. The fencing club was born there, and it grew there, fortunately when it got sick, it slunked off to the campus recreation center to die. There isn't a smell much more depressing than dead fencing club.
I have a great many memories of fencing in the space, both good and bad. Ironically, most of the bad memories of fencing in that gym centered on setting up fencing tournaments, which was a shame since that was what I was there to do. Back in my college days, we were a college club filled with real college students. The men were really disfunctional and thought they knew everything, the women were really psycho for the most part, but at least they were generallly cute. We weren't NCAA, we were the other guys. We were the freaks and the geeks who were drawn to fencing for reasons that had little to do with being athletes. We were out of shape, and we were awkward, even those who had played high school ball sports. Most notabily, we weren't team players, and that was the one thing we all had in common.
Setting up a tournament in those days meant we trickled into the gym between 7:00 and 8:30 and argued bitterly over how many strips and which direction they should go in. The actual setup began around 9:00 or so when the losing half left in a huff to either drink at Hams or sneak onto the roof of McIver Building to fence. We typically got finished by 11:30 or so, went to Hams, ate, drank, and vowed to be in the gym the next morning by 8am. (Few ever managed to keep that vow.)
Now I am with a different club filled with a very different group of people, or at the very least the same group of people only they are either too young to be in college, or old enough to have graduated and gotten over themselves. Never was I more aware of this then when they arrived en masse right on my heals ready and able to do what needed to be done to get they gym ready for fencing.
Instead of set up being a gang war over neutral ground with factions fighting with every last breath (sort of like congress), I was a conductor, and our club's members were highly skilled musicians. We went from a gym filled with ghost and memories, to a six strip fencing salle in record time and still had plenty of time left to stand around making last minute plans and decisions. The spirits of Bob, and Ben had been exercised, leaving behind only the spirits of Mark and Noah.
It was a good night, and a very good omen for things to come.
