Once again, the best the US has to offer in the men’s sabre division found themselves together in New York with an opportunity to gear up for the 2008 season and perhaps work off that extra piece of holiday pie that was just too tempting. However, in a nice change of routine, the camp was in a new location, the Manhattan Fencing Center near Times Square in Midtown, which first welcomed New York fencers to its self-described “family” atmosphere in early September of 2007. The camp took place from December 26th to the 30th and was under the direction of national men’s saber coach, Yury Gelman, who invited the top 8 men’s sabre fencers, top 4 juniors, top 2 cadets and best in the youth 14.
If that was not enough for this newly founded space, there were two other simultaneous camps running, including a women’s saber camp (boasting guests such as, Sada Jacobson, Dogmara Wozniak, Daria Scheinder and Emma Baratta) and a youth/beginner camp for those looking for a little fun between Christmas and New Year’s. Though this may seem like quite a lot to handle for the club owner and national coach (who was a little under the weather to boot), he did so with aplomb. Gelman is no stranger to hosting such events, as evidenced by his successful summer camps at Kutcher’s Sports Academy in Monticello, New York, however, this year he brought with him some new tricks to liven up the atmosphere.
It has been argued in the past that US fencers, though rife with technical ability, competitive vigor and can-do attitudes, do not spend as much time as the Europeans doing drills to cement a coherent tactical system in their minds. It was with this complaint in mind that Gelman geared this camp towards amending these deficiencies through drills designed exactly for that purpose. Though most sessions involved a great deal of free fencing, they often began with specific tactical drills intended to elucidate the core of fencing strategy (e.g. working with combinations of actions that work in concert with each other, taking away a key action so as to force the fencer to work on another weaker action, etc.). This type of focus is a notable departure from the traditional emphasis on physical preparation, footwork and fencing and was perfectly timed for both the senior and junior fencers who are to begin competing overseas in January and have already built their physical and tactical base for this year.
And all the while, peppered in between the tactical work, Gelman threw in some impromptu tournaments of his own design to get the pre-season competitive juices flowing. The most notable of these events was a round robin team event pitting intentionally mismatched teams against each other, with some special handicaps to even out the event. The less experienced team received extra touches at the beginning of each match, forcing the more experienced team to focus and deal with the mounting deficit. Of this experience Daria Schneider (2007 NCAA Champion) said, “in most real competitions you run into myriad situations during which you have to deal with being down because of silly mistakes that you made or, more often than not, a poor referee. This was a great opportunity to buckle down and focus on only the things that we could control.”
Additionally, as the culminating event of the camp, Gelman scheduled an Open Competition (aka New York Liberty Cup) for the last day of camp, affording the campers one more day to work on what they had learned in a more realistic setting. In the women’s division Sada Jacobson emerged victorious (Daria Schneider 2nd), saying of her camp experience that “all in all I really enjoyed this year’s camp. I really felt like I was pushed to find new solutions to common fencing problems in some of the unique exercises that we did. I really liked the competitive side of the camp as well, as I felt it really put me in the right headspace going into this season’s tough stint of competitions.”
Winning the men’s division was 2000 and 2004 Olympian, Keeth Smart (Tim Hagamen 2nd), who said of his experience, “as a member of the old guard of men’s sabre fencing, so to speak, I really found this camp to be a great opportunity for me to see some our young, up and coming talent. I have to say that I was impressed with what I saw, and I have the utmost confidence in our next generation’s ability to take what we have done and go another step further.” With the camp complete and 2007 coming a close, campers left tired but happy with many rhapsodizing about the week spent among others just as passionate about finding the key to breaking through to the next level.