“Hand out, shoulders straight, knees bent!” My teammates would religiously roar at me—their words challenging me to be better, to master my technique. And it worked, too. I was a proficient fencer, a worthy opponent to even the most skilled fencer. At the outset of my sophomore year in high school, though, something changed. I thought I contracted a disease and worried that something was eating away at my body. What else could explain why I was underperforming in fencing tournaments? Little did I know, this lack of success would catalyze the most important event of my fencing career. For five years, I had been fencing and winning tournaments in saber, one of three fencing weapons , but my fencing skill unexpectedly diminished to a shadow of …show more content…
Only after competing in a tournament did I see that my skills were shoddy. This made me realize that I was not being challenged. My coach did not fence, and the rest of the fencers were not serious about it. Cognizant that nobody improves by taking the easy way out, I made the difficult decision to change fencing clubs. The first person I went to was an old fencing friend. She brought me to a place that appeared abandoned, possibly historical. There were unkempt walls, rusty pipes, and massive spiders everywhere. However, the appearance itself was not too atrocious. In fact, the 1950s design eventually grew on me. The one thing that really mattered was the fencing coach. He was by no means young, but he still challenged me during practice. What I appreciated most was his wisdom. Sure he was a good fencer, but nothing impacted me as heavily as his ideals. He constantly stressed that I should focus on improving my weaknesses rather than my strengths. It was such a simple idea, but I followed through with it. At first I was skeptical because the initial effect of using my worst skills resulted in me losing. But slowly over the next few months, I got the hang of it. I started to realize how quickly I could excel by making conscious decisions about what I needed to