Epee Nomads, our renegade active fencer group, will ring out 2020 with a last open bouting on December 18!

Holiday travel and subsequent self-imposed quarantines will delay our first open bouting to the first full week of January 2021. We’re not sure yet if we’re restarting First Tuesday (1/5) or First Friday (1/8), but restart we will! You’ll find out right here where and when.

Despite the shutdown of our training venue at Loyola-Blakefield, our rogue Epee Nomads are looking back on a memorable fencing season: Many hundred individual bouts fenced, first in 90-degree heat outside on the pole vault track of Towson High, then underneath the protective awning of Towson High’s Auditorium, and now in our temporary indoor venue at the Rotunda (see picture above).

The Nomads have attracted fencers from a variety of local clubs that shut down during the pandemic. We fence according to “old-school” epee rules: Bouts for 15 touches, no lime limits, none of the “lack of combativity” nonsense, no coin flipping. Those are intense fights that truly grind you down and allow the fencer to adapt, counter-adapt and re-adapt to his or her opponent — the way epee is supposed to be.

In our indoor venue, fencers wear face masks and Leon Paul clip-ins under their FIE masks. The rule is that when the fencing mask goes down, the face mask must be up. The group provides face shields to be worn by anyone not actively bouting. All points of communal contact are disinfected, and our maximum attendance for each evening is 6.

Actually: This has been so much fun, I’m not sure if we actually want to stop!

So, rest your bones, cure your pulls and strains, let your bruises fade for the next couple of weeks.

To all fencers and their families, we extend a hearty “Happy Holidays!” Stay safe and prosper!

We’ll meet again in 2021!

—Coach Chris