Adopt vs. Adapt in Collegiate Fencing
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Adopt vs. Adapt in Collegiate Fencing
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Date
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April 1940
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volume
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5
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2
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page start
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10
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10
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en
ADOPT VS. ADAPT IN COLLEGIATE FENCING
By JOHN W. DIMOND
We have tried to adopt the continental game of fencing and I am convinced that we have not been overly successful. I believe that we will have amazing results if we try to adapt the continental game to the American way or tradition of sports and games.
As an instance, we might consider how the English game of rugby has become the American game of collegiate football on this side of the briny.
We now accept the dictates of the F.I.E. and try to conform in every particular. The value in this is universal uniformity of rules only. Meanwhile, our natural talents and our qualities of spirit and temperament are being dominated.
A question involved is whether or not we wish to pattern after, or do we wish to create, our own form of play and games. Do we wish to copy a continental form, or do we wish to copy the American form?
I believe that any form of fencing is splendid and valuable training for the undergraduate, but I also believe that the appreciation and consequent values can be improved by making the contests simpler and more understandable. Fencing may readily be adapted to the American form as in boxing, wrestling, and many other fine games which are, or have been, shaped to suit our natural talents and temperament.
I believe that the collegiate game of fencing would be a better game and hence more popular, and that our fencers would make better progress, if we conducted our matches after the general form of, for instance, boxing.
The following outline has great merit in my opinion:
Teams to consist of three men to contest with foils, three men to contest with swords, and three men to contest with sabers; a total of nine men.
Each team to designate its running order or number one, two, and three-man in each weapon.
Each contestant to oppose the corresponding man on the opposing team only.
The bouts to be for ten or more hits, or of a duration equal to a full and reasonably severe test.
It will be seen that a dual meet will consist of three bouts in foils, three in swords, and three in sabers, a total of nine bouts as compared with a total of twenty-seven as at present.
The opposition to this idea points out that such a plan would reduce the number of personalities with which the fencer must deal and thus, in effect, curtail his experience.
I contend that the boxer, wrestler, tennis player, squash player, golfer, soccer player, lacrosse player, football player, etc., etc., has a similar problem and has gotten along very well while following the American form.
There is a positive psychological element involved which each can seek out to suit his own fancy. There is also the matter of taste. I dislike to see a bad performer come up again and again to repeat a bad performance.
Twenty-seven bouts is not an athletic contest in the American collegiate tradition. It is, rather, a form of strange and unusual punishment for all concerned.
