Foil your other plans and try Sarasota Fencing Academy and Club

If you’re looking to sharpen your wit through conversation, head to 1279 Tallevast Road in Sarasota on a Monday, Wednesday or Friday night.

This type of “conversation,” the Sarasota Fencing Academy and Club kind, is not done through words. It is done through the clashing of foil on foil.

Fencers lunge, parry and riposte in bouts. Here, the fencers make the moves, and the swords do the talking. In fencing terms, conversation is defined as the "back-and-forth play of the blades." 

Richard Georgia opened the club in 2008, about two years after he moved to Sarasota for its arts community. Georgia has been fencing since he was a 12-year-old kid in Rehoboth, Mass., with an interest in the Renaissance, when the sport was modernized. After seeing intricate swordplay sequences in movies like "The Princess Bride," he convinced his parents to sign him up for lessons, and he instantly fell in love.

“I was excited to feel history in my hands,” Georgia said.

Georgia kept fencing through college, even medaling at a few national events along the way. When he moved to Sarasota, though, he had to stop. There was simply no fencing club in the area good enough to suit Georgia’s needs.

He thought he had a shot at the Olympic team, and was not going to give up on that dream, so he decided to open his own academy and club.

A herniated disk and a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his knee put a damper on Georgia’s dream, but he loves teaching the sport to others and spreading his passion and knowledge.

“Most people who try it, enjoy it,” Georgia said. “But you don’t really know what it is until you try it.

“You don’t realize how much it is a physical game of chess. It’s a mental game. It really pushes you to the fastest of your neurological response times. It forces you to make very quick decisions.”

Georgia’s academy features youth and adult classes, plus club time, when fencers of any level can challenge each other freely. Introduction to Fencing classes for youth and adults are six weeks long and cost $155. Club memberships are $60 a month.

Fencing is not a "dorky" sport, Georgia said. That is one of the misconceptions he wants to clear up. The fencing community is tight-knit, and it's filled with intelligent and driven people, among them doctors, artists and lawyers. 

"It's not a sport you get into if you want to make a million bucks," Georgia said. "It's a sport you get into because you are truly passionate about it."

Tomasin Brennan is a 14-year-old fencer from Sarasota. At 7, Brennan won the gold medal in the Under 10 Mixed Foil Competition for the United States Fencing Association’s Central Florida Division. She stopped fencing for a while to race Go-Karts, but picked the sport up again about two months ago.

Brennan said she was aggressive growing up and always gravitated to male-dominated sports. She tried ballet, but decided that was too “fancy-dancy.”

Naturally, a sport involving swords caught her attention.

“It’s the one legal place where you can stab people,” Brennan said, mid-giggle. “It’s really fun.”

Brennan also likes being fully under your own control in fencing, something that she didn’t experience in Go-Karting. The one-on-one aspect of the sport makes things feel more personal, Brennan said.

Matthew and Mark Vu, 8 and 6 years old, are relative newcomers to the sport.

Mark Vu said going against other people bouts is “pretty cool,” and that he has already learned to stand and lunge and recover. Mark Vu also said his helmet is heavy, but that he can handle it.

His brother was less forthcoming.

“I just like it,” Matthew Vu said with a shy grin.

I can see why. Fencing is a great time and a unique workout. I appreciate sports that reward mental preparation just as much as physical prowess. There’s a grace, an elegance, to fencing that draws me toward it. Its movements are fluid, and the reaction time of its participants is extraordinary. Plus, swords are just plain awesome.

Space is limited at the club, so I’d advise interested parties to quickly sign up. You don’t want to miss out on your chance to be the next Inigo Montoya.