Monday, March 27, 2000 | 8:27 a.m.
The age-old sport of fencing is just an infant in Southern Nevada.
But fans say interest in the activity, which has been called "physical chess," is growing here by leaps and thrusts.
Six months ago a fencing club was started at UNLV, one of several now in the valley.
And Mel North, 75, an internationally acclaimed fencing instructor who has his own club, is urging fencing masters he has trained from around the country to come to Las Vegas to teach.
Last year North was elected chairman of the Nevada State Division of Fencing, part of the United States Fencing Association (USFA). Before he took over, he said, there were three or four meets a year in the state.
"Now, we have 35 a year," North said. "The Reno area also is growing (with fencing enthusiasts). We want to develop a separate division in Las Vegas. California has eight divisions."
Nationwide, the U.S. Fencing Association (USFA) in Colorado Springs, Colo. has grown from about 7,000 members 10 years ago to 15,000 today, according to Carla Richards, former executive director of the organization.
"We see the growth continuing. We don't see an end to it," Richards said.
About 40 percent of the members, who compete at various levels from local bouts to the Olympics, are children. "There are probably 100,000 to 150,000 recreational fencers in this country, people who don't belong to the association," Richards said.
Carl Borack, 52, a motion picture producer from Los Angeles (his credits include the 1996 film "Shiloh") and a former Olympic fencer, is shopping for a venue to hold high-profile national and international fencing competitions in Las Vegas.
Borack has a long history with fencing. He was a member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic Fencing Team, a U.S. National Champion in Men's Foil and a two-time gold medal winner in the Pan Am Games. He has been captain (nonplaying) of the U.S. Fencing Team since 1985, and was captain of the U.S. Olympic Team in 1988, 1992 and 1996. He will be captain again this summer in Sydney, Australia.
He also served as executive vice president of the USFA and was a member of the U.S. Olympic Committee's Public Relations Committee.
"There has been an explosion in fencing for a lot of reasons," said Borack, who was 9 years old when North gave him his first lesson in Los Angeles. "We've had a great influx of Soviet bloc coaches.
"The (USFA) has become much better at offering age level competitions, plus there is an increase in the number of those who enjoy the sport but not necessarily competing.
"Fencing is physically and intellecutally challenging," Borack continued. "But it has one down side. Unlike a lot of sports that you can do quickly, in fencing you have to have the mindset to put in the time to develop technique, like a golfer. There is no instant gratification in fencing."
But once you become hooked on fencing, the passion may burn for a lifetime.
North learned the sport at the age of 10 -- he's been involved with it for 65 years. "I've retired three times," he said. "I can't give it up. I love this game."
In 1974 North retired as head fencing coach at UCLA, where his teams were rarely defeated. He said he moved to Colorado to raise horses, but 19 of his students followed him and he opened a fencing school.
"Within a year I had 350 (students). Six years later, I retired again and went back to California and two weeks later I was teaching again," he said.
In 1990 he retired again and he and his wife, Gloria Bowen, an international ballet star, moved to Las Vegas, where he soon was again teaching individual students.
Two years ago they opened a studio on East Desert Inn Road, where they teach fencing and ballet. The couple also have a nonprofit fencing and ballet foundation to help needy children.
North wants to share his love of fencing with the public, especially children, who are tomorrow's champions, he said. About 50 of his 90 students are children ages 10 and older.
"We have one of the largest junior Olympics programs in the country," North said. He plans to begin a pre-Junior Olympics program for 4- and 5-year-olds.
North said that fencing is not only a way for children to become physically and mentally fit, but it also is a way for many to go to college on a scholarship. "Most major universities offer fencing scholarships," he said.
Michelle Brinlee, 14, is one of his prized students. The eighth-grader at Las Vegas Day School has won many state and national competitions.
"I started fencing two years ago," Brinlee, who maintains a 4.0 grade point average, said. "I barely knew what fencing was. Now I spend two to three hours a day, five nights a week practicing. It is a physical and mental test. A lot of strategy is involved."
Berger leaves mark
While North's students are dedicated to him and his teaching methods, the students of 76-year-old Mark Berger are equally dedicated to Berger, who learned fencing as a young man in the communist Soviet Union.
Berger, who speaks with a heavy Russian accent, taught fencing in Moscow for almost 20 years, was a national fencing coach for the country from 1960 to 1972, and the national fencing coach in Israel from 1972 to 1975. He also has coached U.S. Olympic teams, and since 1991 has been fencing coach at UNLV.
Berger teaches that fencing is more than physical and mental exercise -- "you learn respect, you learn etiquette," he said.
"The coach is rough, but fair," one student wrote in an evaluation of Berger at the end of one of his UNLV fencing courses. "He teaches esprit de corps."
Among his students are Jeff Markle, 25, president of the UNLV Fencing Club, and father-daughter fencers Bill Nicoletti, 47, and Jessica Nicoletti, 15.
Markle, a mechanical engineering student who has been competing about two years, said that the university's club is going through growing pains. "It's difficult because of scheduling. We're still building," he said.
The Nicolettis have been fencing about seven years, since Jessica was 8. "It was something I had always wanted to try," Bill Nicoletti, a pharmacist, said. "I did rowing in college and then nothing for 20 years. I wanted to do something to help me stay in shape and keep my attention."
And he wanted an activity he could do with his daughter. "It's a bonding activity for us," he said. "We have a good relationship."
Nicoletti competes occasionally, as family and career duties permit. But Jessica routinely competes in local and national events, often scoring at the top among contenders. She recently placed second in both foil and epee (the most popular of the three fencing weapons) for women at a meet in Victorville, Calif. At a North American Cup meet in Minnesota in October she placed 13th in epee competition among 80 girls and 13th at the Summer Nationals in Charlotte, N.C.
Her years of dedication have paid off, not only in placing high at national meets but in building self-confidence, poise, graceful movement and teaching her to focus, her father said.
Berger said that fencing is a deterrent to juvenile delinquency. He noted that it can redirect criminal and anti-social behavior into positive action.
Plenty of parrying
Not everyone believes that everything is perfect in the world of fencing. There's a lot of parrying going on in the sport that is taking place outside of the arena.
While many ardent fans say that interest in the centuries-old pastime has exploded in recent years, others say that the sport is slowly dying in this country, a death being hastened by the NCAA and by what critics say are incompetent bureaucrats administering the sport.
Jeff Tishman of New York City is a former competitive fencer and currently is historian for the U.S. Fencing Coaches Association (USFCA). He is extremely outspoken about the state of affairs of the sport.
"It's a sport in decline," Tishman said.
Thirty years ago, 70 or 80 universities had a fencing team, he said, now there are 38. "And a lot of them are in trouble," he said.
Tishman said that in the 1990s fencing was dropped from the athletic programs of such universities as Cornell, which had offered it for more than 100 years, and the U.S. Naval Academy, which had offered it for 150 years.
"Wisconsin and Illinois dropped their programs after 90 years," Tishman said. "These people are whistling in the wind if they think the numbers are improving."
He said there are many reasons for the decline at the college level, among them the NCAA and Title IX, a federal law that mandates parity between male and female sports.
"The NCAA doesn't like any sport that doesn't make money," he said. "It ran the Big 10 (fencing) Championship out of business, and it was founded in 1829. It ran the North Atlantic out and it was founded in 1950."
Title IX hurt because universities are looking at places to cut funds to create budgets for male and female sports that are equal. Because fencing is a small sport, it is easily dropped.
"And the U.S. Fencing Association has not helped any. They fail to speak out against the actions by the NCAA," Tishman said.
One reason that fencing grew from an elite sport in the 1890s to a democratic one, Tishman said, is that colleges sponsored it. Until 1977 fencing was run outside the NCAA. Then it began interfering and the number of colleges with teams began shrinking.
And, according to Tishman, the college teams "stir the drink."
"It pays coaches salaries; it's responsible for what little newspaper coverage we can expect; it provided us with a continuing source of young people who would pick up the sport," Tishman said.
Richard Gradkowski, secretary-treasurer of the coaches association, also is concerned about the future of fencing. "The NCAA, in its enlightenment in compliance with Title IX, is killing minor sports," he said. "Colleges are dropping fencing; dropping wrestling, swimming, track and field."
Gradkowski said that the United States is under-represented at international meets and barely represented at the Olympics. "Fencing in this country is growing very slowly," Gradkowski said. "There is plenty of fencing, but the quality is very low. It's like a lot of sandlot football and sandlot baseball."
This seems ironic.
"We have great coaches in this country, half of them are trained in Europe," he said. "These are the same guys who have trained Olympic champions.
"But the structure is different in Europe," Gradkowski added. "You don't have the financial backing that you would have in Europe."
Gradkowski also said that there are a lot of talented fencers in this country. But there are no nationally organized developmental programs, "only fragmented ones on a local basis."
What the sport needs is money.
"The lack of funding is a major stumbling block," said Gradwkoski. "But the USFA is incompetent as far as raising funds goes. They think a fund-raiser is a cookies and cake sale."
Touche.
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