team how do you like it what's your experience with it so far i really enjoy it's such a fun and unique sport it is so like when you're talking about the fencing team how long have you been on there been with the team for four years now four years and when when you started how was that influential in your life in especially as a student well i mean it's a lot of hours a week with practices it's sometimes hard to get in all my homework but i make do so you're saying as a student it really affects your life especially with homework and projects and tests but how do you balance that while in some ways it it also helps me because it's such a mental sport it's almost like training my brain and that lets me do a little better in school to so you're doing better in school because  in a way how so like what is how is that like applying into your academics you just you need a lot of mental activity to be the best student an offen or and it's just it contributes both ways to making so on sensing itself what what is your experience so far as  with the sport like how did you feel coming into it and what did you think when you first started well coming into it i thought it was going to be pre pretty cool and my expectations were definitely met i mean like you always watch movies and see people like sword fighting and things and i got to like start doing that and it was really fun what kinds of expectations were you thinking about being in fencing i really wanted to succeed i think it's best i thought it was going to be a sport where i could succeed and i'm happy that it was what do you mean by succeeding where did you think  going to how many i'm bad at sports football i think a lot of people are really bad at sports bars i for one am included but with fencing itself like for instance their uniforms involved what do you what is your take on the uniforms well it's there's a lot of components to the uniform and it's definitely very hot there's lots of layers of protection to make sure you're not getting hurt while you're fencing so with that we actually have a clip talking and showing you in fencing so we're going to roll that clip because it will display mostly about your uniform and  equipment involved and i'm going to get to  so is you can see in the video you're kind of attached to a wire of sorts can you explain what goes on there especially with the rest of the you know for so when you put on the uniform on over the basic protection before the jackets there is a wire and that connects to first your sword through your sleeve and then out the back there it connects to the real which will then connect you to a machine where it will light up when you get a point so why why does it have to be connected to your sword so when your sword touches the other person it'll like send a signal through and through to the real which is so you can only move like back and forth really to oh ok so with how does your uniform help you achieve goals i guess with  like your games or your tournaments is that what it's called torments competitions doesn't really matter but the uniform is it is it keeps you safe that well obviously that's a good are there different types of uniforms  there the uniform differs between the three styles of fencing which are foil up and saber because there's different there's just a lot of different things that go into each each style and therefore you need different equipment so you're saying there are three different types of thousand fencing how do each one different like you say foil and if they would the difference between those for oil is where the target area is just chest and is the whole body and sieber is the upper body ok so they have different target areas what's your most preferred style i'm a fan of f a it's it's fun how come what makes it more influential in your life as opposed to the other two you just you use different strategies to to to attacks for sure and it just makes it a little more interesting when you can hit and be anywhere so with which one can you be hit anywhere is that the one you're most in your most good at i would say does that take you into competitions which one do you compete mostly in i compete in foil an f a pretty much equally because i sign up for competitions i just sign up for both i want to i want to try to do my best and and anything i can do so what types of competitions are there there are the competitions with the school and then there are a lot of competitions that are just outside of school with individuals just from anywhere really so when you get more formal into outside school competitions what are those like have you been to a few i've been to a few there's a there's a few each year some of them are with some there was team some of them are individual and they are very long and sometimes tedious but good why are they so long what makes them drag on for such long periods of time well there's just a lot of waiting in between the bouts that you get defense and just in between the different parts of the competition because first there's the pools and then there's the direct elimination which is kind of like the playoffs and a lot of processing information and then just getting so that takes a long period of time so when you say playoffs like what is entailed in sensing when you lose you're out of the competition well obviously like there's so like there's different levels of competition is that  true well it's kind of well what the different levels of competition how what is your rank do you have ranks in fencing and how does that progress you forward through the competitions while there are two different kinds of ranking in the school just with our club we have the captains and one of the i'm the captain of f a there's also the captain of foil had captain on the girls captains and that that gives you the privilege of starting in the school competitions and letting you take the teams really you get to be like the head strategist so when you're a captain as you say you are then you get to be the head strategist and how does that advance your fencing career in a sense w the sides it looks really good on a resume you get a lot more experience and in competitions sometimes you don't get the sense that as a captain you get more of a chance to defense and and when so you're saying whenever you're younger in the lower ranks you don't get the chance to sense is often walt and outside of the school competitions there's always plenty of chances for people to fence and either what age are or skill level you just have to sign up but then in the school when we do competitions versus  and and skill so with that then what would you what kind of advice would you give to the newcomers or the beginners in fencing i think the most important advice to give to newcomers to fencing is to keep at it because they're they're really not going to have the skill of the beginning you really have to to try and keep practicing and till you're better because it just takes time and how long did that take for you the learning curve it definitely took a few years until i started to realize that i was getting a lot better than i was before i started so you say that you've been in for four years and how long did this learning curve take you before it projected you into becoming captain like how did what was your experience with learning well i just you know you started doing better and better practices and i got some i started placing in competitions outside of school so coaches decided that i was i would be a good captain  so you the coaches decide the coaches do decide how what does that process like well they give some time in the beginning of each year so technically right now our captains haven't been announced yet but they will be by a week or so from now and how many like captains are being chosen and we don't really know who's going to be chosen but it's usually the the seniors first because they want because the coaches want everyone to have like equal opportunities to be captains and then to the seniors of the graduating they're going to try to give them those opportunities first and as for how many there is there is the head katherine there's oil and i think half and for boys and then there's the girls captain and four and i pay for girls so there's a lot oh ok so that's pretty interesting with different types of captains and stuff and they separate them with gender is that they do is you guys compete in different gender categories we do compete mostly in different gender gag orders but there are also a few competitions where it's mixed ok well but that we're going to go to break and it will come back a short go back and we're right it's asked josh as to why i'm curious why would you choose fencing as one of the sport as opposed to all the others well i think because it's different really it's it's nothing like almost any other sport out there and it just it kind of just clicked i thought like that's cool so why didn't you choose the other sports i mean as you said that they're not like it's different but what makes it different everything i mean just the the the kind of how works is just a of a lot different than everything else with all the with all different equipment and just the men the mentality of it and then how do you even get exposed to sensing how does if someone's willing to join how do they even join while we try to expose ourselves as much as possible but still a lot of people don't know we exist that we always have like the one that when the high school does disclose things you really just you can start in seventh grade with the club and we really tried to get ourselves out there but sometimes it will last and everything else so how does how do you and how do those your club reach out to the students this year i think we we did a couple announcements on like the morning announcements and stuff at the middle school i don't know if we did  nice to know that people are enjoying this and and yeah ok so how is as we discussed prior how is not only being a student other things why would you even choose it well because it's it's almost like a little bit of a release from all the all a lot of stress and  because i mean i really just i have so much fun with it and i want to i want to keep doing i definitely want to keep doing it in college too if i can so far how many is it difficult to find colleges that support fencing since it's such an underrated sport yeah actually but there are definitely a lot of colleges out there that if they don't have a team then they at least have a club or the opportunity for you to start one and then as a high school student how does the dynamic between high school fencing and professional such collegiate level fencing differ well we go up against some level fencers a few different tournament's like the holy grail tournament and you can tell that they're just they are so much more skilled i think they have a they even have more better team dynamic too so how how is their team dynamic better in your words once i guess i probably just comes with maturity to be honest the one or two year level difference then i can see how that would happen then you're thinking of going into professional not professional but just to continue it as as just something i do for fun ok and you talked about in tournaments as before what kind of tournament competitions lympics are there in in fencing and what have you been involved in well every year there's so many opportunities for tournament there's a few with the tiger fencing club that i do ask out of school and there's the holy grail torn men and that's that's a cmu and there's also the junior olympics which i qualified for this year and that's in memphis and february oh how did you qualify for that tournament  a miniature competition with only a few people so you're not really doing much to get into the process of being in the in the tournament i mean it was it was pretty so then you're in the olympics as as you said doing your own there's you in your olympics what's the the dynamic like there i have no idea so you've never been invited and i have not six or holy ground i think this will be my fourth time going this year and how did that leg make you feel to make it go there to make it there at least it's nothing to make it there you just sign up for th wilson then is there any real merit based i mean i'm not trying to offend at all but is there any like merit based actions that you have to completely in order to go to tournaments or olympics you have to be able to breed and yet to be the right age i guess there's a separated by age groups and what happens when you lose in a tournament  mean a lot of people lose and tournament's obviously it's not really too much of a big deal then what was your most negative experience while working in fencing i think the most negative experience would be just with like team chemistry not always working and us just sometimes just not agreeing with each other and it gets a little or rough so if you're saying that you guys work separate but together how does that dynamic work that's the thing to separate  but together it makes things pretty difficult but we try to just be a team as much as possible and support and support everyone on our team no matter how minor what we're doing even for individual how do you support your team  you know each year for them so like when you're on the team you can't do any sorts of like real things to help them you just have to be there and you can give them advice for sure you  during journey time out periods people can go up and tell you like see like what you're doing wrong and how do you how you can do a better and and your fencing career how have you had any influential people in your life come through with something while when you when you meet people that are just older than you and they're they're more experienced th they definitely become influential because you want to be like them you want to be better and that and they make it look easy so then what has your experience been with your older counterparts are our old captains or they're always like sometimes they come back even and they're just they're so nice and fund how is it at the practices they make they ma gilmore encourage they make you a little more encouraged so that if they're coming back are there specific dates times or current events where they do come not really sometimes that they really did they just come to  stay in touch with the team and the coaches ok ok so then with that then what was your most positive experience with them including the older ones that have left and me and one other and that was such a great experience i really loved that whole thing and why did you love it so much what made it so impactful in your life well because i think it might have been the first time that i really contributed a lot to getting first place so the how so how did this positive experience really shape your fencing and how you work basically it made me it made me feel like i could definitely do this like you know sometimes you get a little down you have bad days but you know you know that you can you can do it and how does if you do have a bad day how does that affect your your style how does that affect how you play if you start you can't let it get to you because if you let it get to you then you're going to start losing and that's why you're in start losing you have to maintain the the mentality that you can that you can win as a captain how have you seen that in you younger counterparts while they they they seem like i almost want to try as much because they they think we're just better so i don't think that's true i think everyone can be just as good as everyone else when they try what has your experience been with that whenever you see that among your teammates you got to get him to just pull off the ground you tell and defense you you like ask them you've got to get them to keep trying against you have there been anyone that any people that gave up and dropped out because of that yeah we definitely have a of a bunch of people that have dropped out over the years but ok ok well it seems as though that we have run out of time so thank you josh for being here to tell us all about your experience with the fencing team and thank you for t