Fourteen years ago the men’s varsity fencing team became another casualty of Title IX, forced to disband in order to fund women’s varsity athletics.
But with the loss of the varsity team, which won the school’s first national title in 1941, came the birth of club fencing.
Rob Lichten, a junior at the time and one of the former varsity players, started the club team immediately after the varsity squad folded. More than a decade later, the club team works closely with the Wildcats’ women’s varsity program.
“The club team here is fortunate in that we have a structure with the varsity women’s team, so that we have equipment and supplies and things that another club might not have,” said Laurie Schiller. “We had a lot of it since we were varsity, and the women have it now so we have the resources of a varsity program.”
Schiller is the full-time coach of the women’s varsity fencing team and has held this position for more than 30 years. Schiller, however, also lends his time and knowledge to the club team, helping out volunteer coach Clint Smith. Despite all these resources, the team shares many of the same struggles other club teams have.
“After all, it’s a club team and the athletic department doesn’t want us to do something for the guys at the expense of the women’s team,” Schiller said.
Nevertheless, the club fencing program has been very successful and even won national club championships in 2003 and 2005.
“As far as clubs go we just (won) the best club in the conference title,” Davidson Barr, the club fencing team captain, said. “I was really impressed with our team, because we did not even fence up to our full potential and we still managed to clinch the overall team award, which is really exciting.”
Barr, a junior math and economics major, started fencing his freshman year. Though he played tennis throughout high school, when he heard about club fencing at the activities fair he was intrigued and has since become a devoted member of the team.
“I’ve gotten a tremendous amount out of this team,” Barr said. “This sport really speaks to me, because when you put on the mask, and you’re on the strip, you look at the other guy and it’s just you versus him, the whole world changes. It’s really an amazing sport.”
Charles Barrett, on the other hand, is a freshman on the team who has been fencing since the age of nine. Though he did not come to college primarily to fence, he decided to join the team quickly.
“After a couple of weeks of the whole freshman thing, I realized I needed something to do,” he said. “Sometimes fencing is called chess at 100 miles per hour, and that’s kind of the appeal of this sport to me.”
Barrett is one of the few members of the club team with fencing experience prior to enrolling at Northwestern. Even so, the team has managed to place highly in club tournaments and even defeat some varsity squads.
The club credits this success to excellent coaching, hard work, and a desire to succeed as a group.
“When somebody’s fencing, the whole team is behind them and they know that, and I think that really pushes them forward to excel,” Barr said. “Despite our lack of experience we bring our heart there, and that wins us a lot of points sometimes. Like in any sport when you have fire in your belly you can take a lot more points than people think you can.”
