Fencing offers cerebral challenge
By: Rachelle Brown
Special to The Examiner
April 10, 2009
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| Robert King, fencer and assistant coach for the D.C. Fencing Club in Silver Spring, gets in some practice Monday. He plans to compete in a national tournament in the fall. (Andrew Harnik/Examiner) |
PERSONAL BEST ROBERT KING FENCING EPEE SWORD SYSTEMS ENGINEER LOCKHEED MARTIN — Fencing is like playing chess while sprinting, says Robert King, a 27-year-old systems engineer for Lockheed Martin.
“You don’t necessarily have to be the strongest or the fastest person, if you’re the smartest one,” the Germantown resident said. “But being strong and fast is a component.”
King, a fencer and assistant coach for the D.C. Fencing Club in Silver Spring, started fencing when he was 12 years old. His mother and adopted uncle both fenced in college and encouraged him to try the sport. Once he tried, he was hooked.
After a year and a half of fencing lessons, King entered his first tournament and has been competing ever since. He has competed mostly on the local and national levels, but also has been to one World Cup in Canada. Until college took over his life, he was competing in all three of the national tournaments that are held every year.
One of his most memorable fencing moments came while he was fencing in a Junior Olympics qualifying tournament at age 16. When he ducked an opponent’s blow, the opponent jumped over him and clipped the edge of the fluorescent light above them. The light fell and broke on King’s head.
“That was a pretty interesting one, having to pick the pieces of glass out,” he said.
King competes in epee, one of the three types of fencing. It is the style considered closest to actual dueling — a hit on any part of the body counts as a point.
“I never really liked the team sports,” King said. “I liked playing them but they weren’t challenging, there wasn’t a lot of thought required to them. With fencing, you have to outthink your opponent at the same time as not tiring yourself out.”
His next competition will be a national-level tournament in the fall, where he hopes to place in the top 32 out of about 240 competitors.
Though competing is important to him, coaching is also a big part of King’s fencing life. He has been coaching at the D.C. Fencing Club for almost 10 years, starting the beginners and building them up to an intermediate level, at which point the other coaches take over.
After teaching his students Monday through Thursday nights, King takes two lessons a week from the head coaches at the club. Then he spends the rest of the evenings bouting with whomever he can.
“Fencers are probably one of the more intelligent groups of athletes — we have doctors, lawyers, executives, so the conversations outside of the actual bouts are pretty interesting, too,” he said.
In addition to coaching and working at Lockheed Martin, King is finishing his master’s degree in systems engineering, which he has been doing long-distance through Rensselaer Polytechnic University in Troy, N.Y. He has plans for a second master’s in project management from George Washington University that will begin in the fall.
On the weekends he works as a volunteer firefighter in Montgomery County, for which he is taking an emergency medical technician class and will be taking a fire class this summer.
He also does landscaping on the side.
“My schedule’s pretty packed up,” King said. “I tell people you have to get on my schedule two weeks ahead of time, or else take what you can get.”
But fencing is worth it, especially for the friendships.
“One of our fencers had a bout with cancer, and once the community found out, everybody pitched in and made sure that if she ever had any problems they were taken care of, whether that was going grocery shopping for her, running errands, or just being there and being supportive,” he said. “The community aspect is very big, at least in our club.”
Time out with ... Robert King
How do your family and friends handle you being so involved in fencing? Family, they’re the ones that kind of got me started in it, so they’re very understanding about it, very supportive of it. I think they’re just as excited when I do well as I am. Friends come and watch … I get some flak from my girlfriend for how much time I spend fencing.
What is your favorite music to listen to before a tournament? I like techno. Techno, or heavy metal, death metal. Something with a beat. … The music helps a lot because fencing is really about setting up a pattern, a tempo, and then at the moment when it’s advantageous to you, you break the pattern, and the other person’s still stuck in it. You can lull them into a false sense of security, and then “poof!” — you break it and you hit them.
Favorite sports-related movie? There are a couple. Everybody likes “The Princess Bride.” Everybody likes the Zorro movies. Everybody likes the Musketeers. There’s an old one called “By The Sword” that was kind of a bad, sappy romance novel turned into a movie that took place at the New York Athletic Club in the ’80s. All of those are reasonable ones to see. Those are the typical ones that a fencer thinks of.
Tips for new athletes? About once a month we have an hour-and-a-half lesson. I usually teach it. The main goal is to kind of give you a little history, teach you the footwork, teach you the most basic blade work you need to go fence, then let you try fencing. You don’t have to buy gear, it’s a nominal fee … I would say, just come and try it.
What are your eating habits like? The week leading up [to a tournament], I eat a lot of carbs, a lot of pasta, a lot of chicken — lean protein. Then the night before … you eat some protein, some vegetables. And then usually during the tournament I’ll have some peanuts, some trail mix, and then bagels. A lot of water.
