Meditation in Motion:
Sparring with Bard College’s brainiest sport team
By J.p. Lawrence
Capt. Jack Sparrow is effortless cool in his bandana and dungarees, but I am sweat personified as I dip my legs and raise my sword.
It’s my first visit to a practice with the Bard College fencing team, and I look like a mummy with a microphone head, a white straightjacket cocooned around my body and a mesh metal helmet in a cage around my face.
Through the mesh I can see only my opponent: Zoe Neighen, another Bard student learning to fence on a Sunday afternoon in the Stevenson Gym. Neighen, too, is new and fences with a movie in mind; hers is the "Princess Bride," while I yell “Swashbuckle!” as I attack.
“Swashbuckle, huh?” mumbles nearby Hope Konecny, Bard’s fencing coach since 1987, when she founded the program as a varsity sport at Bard.
The silver-maned and armor-clad Konecny laughs. For the three-time Connecticut state fencing champion and two-time U.S. world university championship team member, fencing is not swashbuckling, but meditation in motion, a sport of discipline and focus and quick decisions in a vacuum, like boxing without the punching in the face.
“It’s an elegant sport,” she says of the art of fencing, named after the act of "defencing" yourself from those you have beef with.
Fencing, Konecny says, tells you something about a person’s character. It is a discipline for intellectuals who aren’t meant for typical team sports. A sport for newcomers like Neighen, who attend fencing practices during breaks in essay writing. A sport for people like Rachel Becker and Ben Long.
Flashback to earlier in practice: Becker and Long begin a bout, decked out in white jackets and white fencing pants with their names on them. A cord runs from the silver vests on their chests to a scoreboard on the floor that buzzes when their swords have scored a touch.
Konecny yells, “Fence!” and the mind games begin. With their back arms raised up and their front arms presenting weaponry, Long and Becker skitter like dueling crabs along the horizontal strip that is their battleground.
Long, who started when he was 11, is all legs and arms and athleticism. Before practice, he could be seen stretching, jumping rope and lunging into yoga poses. Long, a film major, said he enjoys fencing for its short bursts of energy and speed, for those moments when he’s in a bout and every action of his body flashes in accordance with the plan inside his brain.
Becker is all about the game’s braininess. The fifth-year conservatory and physics major enjoys most the mental aspect of fencing, the engineering of a touch and the rhythm of a heated bout.
Becker, who started sophomore year of high school, said when she’s fencing she feels relaxed but intense and in control. She grips her sword like she grips the bow of her cello when she’s playing for a crowd.
And the match flies. The bout goes for three minutes or until one of the fencers gets 10 touches. But this is all quick, sudden, violent bursts. Foreplay, strategy, and then a blizzard, a flurry. Swords shivering as they clamor against each other. The ring of the scoreboard and a green light when someone scores a touch. And in this sport, both mind and sword must be swift.
Fencing is timing, tempo, strategy, like physical chess or rock-paper-scissors with swords, Becker explains. “I’ll do a short stab, not meaning to hit, but if he blocks, I’ll pull back and attack from the other side,” she says. “If lucky, he’ll fall for it. If not, he’ll realize I’m setting him up. He’ll ignore the first attack, block the second. But what if I’m already thinking he’s thinking that?”
Fencing is bare-knuckle reaction, muscle memory and getting the touch, Long says. Fencing is long hours practicing for a short, violent game. Fencing is memorizing footwork like you’re learning to dance. And sometimes, he adds, fencing is that perfect moment to attack with the perfect lunge to score and hear that tally machine buzz.
The match ends with Long as the victor, but Becker, head of the fencing club since her freshman year, said that Bard fencing does not stress winning and losing, but personal growth.
Becker said the program in her time at Bard has gone through ups and downs, having 50 people sometimes and at other times only four. The idea of becoming a varsity sport again has been discussed, Becker said, but she wants the club to stay casual.
“We decided to keep it what it is,” Becker said, “which is a place where you can learn something while having fun.”
Newcomers are always welcome, Becker said, and invariably, they end up saying they learned faster than expected. Neighen, for example, found herself in her first bout in her fourth practice.
A bout with me.
And while my first stabs at fencing are sweaty, flailing flurries, I find myself enjoying the flow. I fight aggressively, maybe too much so, like a wounded animal or that guy who steals bases in softball games, but on the strip all my senses roar and I have to stop my mouth from making lightsaber sounds.
And when the match is done, I take off my wacky helmet, shake hands with Neighen, and thank her for a rollicking time. Konecny, who teaches yoga and fencing out of a gristmill she renovated in the Catskill Mountains, tells me later she thinks the force is strong with this current group of fencers, both new and experienced, and that she hopes to bring them to tournaments.
My gloves off, my forehead drenched in sweat, I ask Becker if tournament fencing is anything like the fights in "Pirates of the Caribbean."
“I guess,” Becker says, “in the sense they both have swords.” A laugh. “It’s still pretty cool, even if,” she adds, “it doesn’t look like the movies.”