Ian Schunk, Staff
Fencing is a sport that dates back to the renaissance, the modern mechanics of which developed in an Italian fencing school in the eighteenth century. The art
or sport of fencing consists of three different duels which take place between two opposing fencers. “You will see two people on the strip with their blades, the referee will say on guard, ready, fence and they would fence and whoever gets the touch first, they would get that point.”, said freshman Jacob Bowie.
Bowie being a fencer himself has heard this three word command hundreds of times. The three different forms of fencing duels are characterized by the unique kind of sword used in each.
“There’s three different blades, saber, foil, and epee, and each one has a different target, and a different way of getting a touch.”, said Bowie.
The duel is measured and scored by the number of blows each fencer has on the other, which in the sport is referred to as “touches”. The fencer who ends up having inflicted the most touches is proclaimed the winner. This requires a great deal of skill and agility.
“It’s more of a strategy game compared to other sports, it’s kind of like a game of chess you gotta figure out the right moves to do, figure out where to go, when to go and how to do it.”, said Bowie.
Druid Hills High School’s feature, fencing, freshman, Jacob Bowie has been in the game for a stunning six years. Bowie, however, has only just started playing in tournaments for the past two years of his career as a fencer. He trains at the Atlanta Fencers Club which is located in East Point where he is constantly challenging himself to become better.
The fencing freshman is an expert on the sport and he was able to relate to us in full detail the rules and atmosphere of fencing and the impact is has had on him as a person. “I was a young little boy watching Nickelodeon and an ICarly episode came on and in it was the Fencing Vincent , (IFence, S1, EP 22), and I saw it and I was like that seems interesting and I asked my mom, I was like I wanna try that, I wanna do sword fighting, and she was like okay and we got a groupon for it and I started doing it and fell in love with it.”, said Bowie.
The “Fencing Vincent” was a main character in the tv show who took up fencing. Bowie had the courage and guts to pursue this childhood dream and is living it still today. The rankings in fencing consists of A, B, C, D, E and U. “A” being the best and “U” being the worst. Bowie ranked in a tournament at Clemson University and he is confident that through hard work and dedication that he will be able to fence and duel his way to the top.
Bowie likes the looks of Druid Hills remarking that, “This place is pretty cool, it’s actually really cool, it’s very diverse and the teachers are cool too!”. The fencing freshman will continue to dedicate himself to the art of fencing. “I’m going to practice as much as possible.” Bowie said.
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