Dion Shively Quotations

In fencing, it's just you and your opponent. You don't have teammates you can blame. You usually don't have a referee to blame. You either win or you don't. Every time you go out there, it's a test of your own skill and ability and how hard you work.

The best thing about this sport is that you can do it all your life. I know people who started fencing when they were 70 years old. This is a sport where using your head really counts. 'Physical chess' is a term that's been frequently applied to fencing. Really, the mind is the most important weapon you have in this sport.

How you like to style your fencing is really up to your temperament. Some people are aggressive and tend to move around a lot; some people are very passive and let their opponents make the first move. No two people fence entirely alike. It's one of the things that makes it so interesting.

What appealed to me is what hooks most people, and that's Hollywood. 'Zorro,' 'The Three Musketeers,' even the sword-fighting stuff from 'Star Wars.' It hits the fantasy button in all of us. Every boy at some point grabs a stick and tries to sword-fight his friends with it in the back yard. We all have that kid inside of us who dreams of knights and sword fighters.

Jason has found a lifelong hobby as well as a great form of exercise. He lost 80 pounds since we opened the club.

I've actually seen kids who have bad attitudes or temper problems come into fencing and I've seen them leave with much more self-control and self-respect. I've seen them go from really lousy kids to pretty nice people, people I could respect. I think fencing can have an uplifting effect on the soul. It's very much a Western martial art.

We attract a different crowd than mainstream sports. We tend to get the people who never exercised, or thought of themselves as athletes, or ever considered taking up any sport. It appeals to the romantic as well as the intellectual side in a lot of us. We get a decent cross mixture of people, a lot of dreamers, gamers and other types.

When he was in his late 60s, he was still beating us young kids who thought we were hot stuff, but was still nice enough to work with us and help us along. So I always had it in the back of my mind that there was this Zen kind of philosophy, this martial arts aspect to fencing.

You will find a few of them, but in fencing they are a much smaller percentage than in any other sport.

Sport fencing is very different from what you see in movies. In fencing, the moves are small and tricky. In the movies, the moves are big and flashy. They're meant to show well before the camera. Actors are trying to look good and not hit somebody. Fencers are trying to hide what we're doing and hit somebody. We try to look good at what we do, but we don't want to telegraph any big, flashy moves because that makes it easier for your opponent to hit you. There has to be a certain subtlety to it.