The Rogue Texas Gulf Coast Fencing Site
Welcome to my personal and completely unofficial site for all things fencing along the Texas Gulf Coast. This page was last updated on Saturday, 18 April 2009.
A Bit of History
The first incarnation of this site was created in the fall of 2001, at a time when my home fencing club's website had cratered. I took out this free, template-driven site to allow us to post club info until our club could get a new site.
By the very early part of 2002, my club's site was up.
Our division, on the other hand, had a website that had not been updated in two or three years. Communication within the division was, itself, problematic. From where I stood, my division seemed to exist without a sense of community, history, or knowledge of what was going on. Without bothering to ask permisssion, I used this site to post such information as I could find on upcoming tournaments (remember, this was PRE-AskFRED), on new clubs forming and other issues within the division.
In time the division got a new "official" website. AskFRED was created by Peet Sasaki on the West Coast. This not only solved a big part of our tournament notification issues, it made holding and attending tournaments infinitely easier.
In time, taking a cue from Craig Harkins and his infinitely successful Fencing.Net, I created the Texas Gulf Coast Fencing Forum. My thought was, during a time of rumor, fiction, friction and general miscommunication, we needed a place to vent, ask questions, answer them, complain and, occassionally, offer the odd compliment. Over time I believe we were able to come closer to a sense of "community" with the forum.
I had already begun (and continue to enjoy working on) a "history" of fencing in our little corner of the world. I call it Campeche Steel. Steel, of course, is often a euphemism for blades. Campeche was the name the pirate Jean Laffite gave to his commune on Galveston Island, pirates being among the first real swordsmen in this region.
With the forum, the need for a weekly or monthly updated "rogue" site ended. It still serves a purpose, although, more subdued. Here we keep schedules of USFA tournaments in our division, access to paperwork and documents, information on Asian, Western historical and SCA fencing in our region, competition videos and clips of stage combat and fight choreography. It is more static, less dynamic, but still, hopefully, a source of information.
Explore.
Enjoy.
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Lost Opportunities
While it is counterproductive to dwell on missed opportunities, sometimes recalling them can spur one on. Above is a clip from just a couple of years ago. The scene is the Hyatt that connects to the George R. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston. The fencers are the heads of various sports NGBs, who were here for a meeting. A feature was fencing with one of the Zimmerman sister and two men from US Modern Pentathlon. The NGB heads gave epee a try using gear borrowed from BCFA, which I was asked to bring. I was the only person from the area fencing community present and, AFAIK, one of only a half-dozen persons in local fencing to know it was happening. We could have made use of such a moment.
New SW Section Officers for 2009-2010
Forgive me if I misspell any names. I will edit and correct later...
Chair: Alan Curry
Vice-Chair: Amgad Badawi
Secretary: Christine Tadlock
Treasurer: Carolyn Gresham-Fiegel
Representative to the USFA Board of Directors: August Skopik
