New Equipment

After being cramped into a tiny six-by-eight-foot closet for years, forcing John Kennedy to piece together old, unreliable equipment since Sept. 2009 and having our coach abandon us, there’s finally some good news for the UConn Fencing Club.

We have new equipment.

Funded a little more than $2,000 by the Undergraduate Student Government, we sent an order to Absolute Fencing Gear. Included in this order were 10 foils, 10 épées, 10 sabres, two size 38 lamés and two size 54 lamés. We debuted this new equipment on April 18, our most recent practice, and everything worked well.

This isn’t especially good news for any of the foil fencers, since we already had an abundance of foils, but for the épée and sabre fencers, this is an amazing gift.

Before we received the shipment, there were only one or two working electrical épées, both right-handed. This, of course, left the lefties with no way to fence. As for the sabre fencers – who didn’t have many blades either – it is now possible for more people to fence without faulty equipment.