Although the fencing club is only a year old, it will become an intercollegiate club sport in fall 2026, according to sophomore and club president Ava Carlson.

“We’re working on joining our conference right now, the Midwest Fencing Conference,” Carlson said. “So we’ll get voted in at the beginning of next semester and then start competing. We have enough members for at least one men’s team and one women’s team.”

Currently, Carlson said the club practices once a week in the George Roche Sports Complex. After next semester, she hopes to increase this to twice a week and add additional opportunities such as lifting.

According to Director of Campus Recreation Ryan Perkins, club sports teams are divided into two categories: intercollegiate and recreational.

“The intercollegiate teams are the ones that compete in a club-level collegiate league or conference,” Perkins said. “The recreational teams either compete in a non-collegiate league or just scrimmage other colleges.”

Carlson said after becoming an intercollegiate sport, fencing will receive increased funding, which will come directly from the college rather than through the Student Federation. The club will need to compete regularly within its conference in order to maintain its status.

“There’s more expectations, but also more resources,” Carlson said. “The plan was always to make fencing an intercollegiate club sport. We just didn’t know how soon that was going to happen.”

Carlson said she started the fencing club because she has been fencing since she was 12 or 13 years old. Even after coming to college, she would fence whenever she was home on breaks.

“I thought it would be fine going to college and not having fencing, but it was not fine at all,” Carlson said. “My options were either to not fence in college or start a fencing club. So I started a fencing club.”

Since Carlson planned to launch the club in fall 2025, she wasn’t allowed to table at the Source. She started an Instagram account over the summer to get the word out, which is how junior Zakira Masslich found out about the club.

“I thought, ‘Oh, that looks interesting. I should give it a try,’” Masslich said. “The club is great, because they give us the equipment that we need to use.”

According to Carlson, modern-day fencing takes place on a strip, a narrow area fencers are allowed to move around on while they fence. At each end of the strip is a box with a reel and cord that runs up through the fencer’s sleeve and connects to his weapon.

“There’s a button, kind of like a button on a mouse, and if I hit someone with my weapon, and there’s enough force, then that will trigger the button, which will trigger the box to light up,” Carlson said. “It makes it so you can fence really quickly, and you’re not trying to prove to the referee that you actually hit the other person.”

According to Carlson, the amount of force needed to trigger the button varies depending on the weapon used. For épée fencing, the style Carlson and other Hillsdale students practice, the fencer must apply 750 grams of force.

“Most people pick one weapon and stick with it,” Carlson said. “I fence épée, so I can’t really teach people to fence saber. I could probably teach foil, but I don’t really want to.”

In addition, Carlson said, because other styles of fencing require additional equipment, épée fencing is the most affordable.

Carlson said she teaches two different tracks simultaneously, one for beginners and one for everyone else. Although students should ideally join the fencing club at the beginning of the fall semester in order to stay on track with everyone else, previous experience is not required.

“Even though we’re in an intercollegiate club sport now, that doesn’t change your ability to do this casually and as a beginner,” Carlson said. “We’ll have more practice and more resources for people to go to, but you don’t have to go to fencing lifting if you don’t want to.”

Still, Carlson said, when it comes to choosing teams for events, people who show up the most will be the ones on the A-team.

“I’m going to shoot for one competition per month,” Carlson said. “People are really busy, and especially in a collegiate sport, you don’t get the support to be traveling all the time. So probably one meet per month, about three or four a semester, which is not bad at all.”

Masslich encouraged students who are interested in fencing to join while they’re in college rather than later.

“Sometimes the entry fees can be more costly when you go to an actual fencing club, and so this is a really easy way to just give it a try and see what it’s like,” Masslich said. “You’re not necessarily going to have the opportunity elsewhere.”