Courtesy of Tony Whelan

Since its founding in 1894, the Yale Fencing team has won several Intercollegiate Fencing Association and National Collegiate Athletics Association championships. 

This excellence results from various factors, most importantly the daily commitment of Yale fencers to their sport, team members said. The News talked to fencers about their daily campus life.  

For the bouting Bulldogs, practice is held daily in the Fencing Room on the seventh floor of Payne Whitney Gymnasium — in the evenings Monday through Wednesday and early in the mornings Thursday through Sunday. 

As the athletes shuffle into the fencing space, Coach Marat Israelian and his dog Sebastian, the team’s unofficial mascot, greet them. With good humor and blasting music, Israelian leads the team through warmups, stretches and shadow fencing, where they fight imaginary bouts without any gear. 

At the same time, Sebastian runs around the fencing room, playing with the Elis and watching his team’s preparations. Once these warm-ups are completed, a moment of rest is taken so the fencers can don their gear. Then, practice begins in earnest.

“On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have drills and lessons, tactics, and on Mondays and Wednesdays, free fencing and sparring,” Israelian told the News. “In practice, we split into the three disciplines — épée, foil and sabre — and will fence against each other.”

While competitive bouts are split by gender, practice sessions are not. Men’s and women’s fencing team members will face off against each other for one hour, no matter their team or skill level. According to Israelian, this encourages familiarity and preparation for a wide variety of styles and skill levels and binds the team together. 

On the days that call for free fencing, after their warmup, the Bulldogs immediately line up opposite each other according to their blade discipline and jump into the bouts. 

Sitting on a bench in the front of the fencing room, Israelian watches the team as they face off, with Sebastian happily seated in his lap. He offers guidance and encouragement amidst the clinging of blades and the sound of sliding shoes upon the pistes. 

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, when the assistant coaches — who each specialize in a specific sword — are present at practice, they do the same.

On tactical days, Israelian focuses on improving the fencers’ skills and technique, advising them both individually and in groups. He tells the team what to work on together and lets them battle. If needed, he gives individual fencers specific assignments based on past performances and practices.

“We do a lot of bouting,” Men’s Fencing Team Captain Tony Whelan ’26 told the News, “but there will be rules applied to the bout; like I can’t take a parry, so I will have to work on hitting straight … we’ll have restrictions on our fencing, putting us in a challenging place.”

In addition to these different practices, there are the workouts. 

Fencing is a very fast sport, relying on the body to quickly transition from defense to offense and move constantly. Beyond the piste, fencers work out in the weight room twice a week, doing various exercises focused on the main muscle groups they use: the core and the legs.

“We do different weight-based exercises, a little bit of cardio work,” Jordan Silberzweig ’27 told the News. “There are a lot of back and forth movements with your legs … we do lunging exercises and different weight lifting exercises, a lot of stuff with the bar.”

This hard work is not limited to their training sessions. Often, fencers put in the work on their own in their free time. This takes many forms, most often in an unofficial practice bout with fellow teammates. Other forms of engagement include runs and recreational lifting sessions with other team members. 

“We rely on each other,” Whelan said, “We have dinner together after practice, and we try to make time for each other outside of fencing. We are all pretty close” 

The Yale men’s and women’s fencing teams will compete in their first official competition of the season at the Vassar Open Invitational on Sunday, Nov. 10.