Looking for an all-year sport for your kids? Fencing builds fitness, endurance, patience, and resilience!

Fencing has been described as “physical chess”. The comparison is apt: While emphasizing all-round physical fitness, fencing emphasizes lightning analytical capabilities to evaluate a situation and respond with an appropriate action under the rules of the game.

But fencing also is just pure FUN! “Each ‘bout’ (individual fencing match) is like a new book, with plot twists and turns that you have to respond and adapt to — and then re-write your own ‘story’ based on the new information,” says Chris Amberger, a 35-year fencing veteran who now coaches adult epee fencers (both beginners and advanced) at Homewood Fencing Club. “It takes a lot of observation, testing, thinking, and plotting.”

Youth Beginners (ages 7-13)

Start: Our first 10-week youth class of 2022 starts on February 5 (Saturdays, 11AM-12PM) at 

Homewood Fencing Club

3400 N. Charles St. – White Gymnasium, Newton White Athletic Center; Baltimore, MD 21218.

(Enter from San Martin Drive.)

Head Coach Austin: (410) 340-6269 ayoung45@jhu.edu

Students will build up agility and stamina in an age-appropriate but challenging class involving:

  • Stretch, Strength & Agility Exercises
  • Footwork
  • Bladework
  • Bouting

JHU Head Coach Austin Young will introduce your child to the concepts of modern competitive fencing in a cooperative, kids-friendly atmosphere. Our program focuses on teaching the proper way to move (balanced advancing, retreating, lunging, acceleration units), using distance both for offense and defense, using the foil both to score on the opponent and to keep from getting scored on). At the end of the course, the students will get to experience fencing using the electric scoring apparatus.

The club provides all gear: masks, gloves, plastrons (a protective garment worn over the shoulder and armpit of the sword warm), and foils.

Our first Youth Beginners Class in 2022 will start on February 5, 2022. New classes start every 10 weeks after that!

Cost: $250 for the 10-week program.

Location:

Homewood Fencing Club; 3400 N. Charles St. – White Gymnasium, Newton White Athletic Center
Baltimore, MD 21218

If you have any questions about the program, please don’t hesitate to contact Coach Chris Amberger at jcamberger@gmail.com.