The Great Unwatched: Despite Little Attention, Men's Fencing 
Continues To Be A Force


Kevin Smokler
--------------------------
Special to The Gazette

     It's Monday at the Athletic Center and sophomore Jeff
Mendoza is hitting a 62-year-old man. 

     The older man stands still like a bowling pin waiting for a
strike. Mendoza whips his sword by his left shoulder and lands it
atop the man's head with a smack.

     "Good!" the man barks to Mendoza. "Again!"

     Welcome to men's fencing, Hopkins style. For 36 years,
flinty Coach Richard Oles has chiseled champions from virgin
stone. Mendoza, a second-year fencer, repeats the maneuver, but
Coach Oles is waiting. He parries, swiping Mendoza's weapon to
the side.

     "Sloppy. Too slow!"

     He pounces. Weapons cut the air like planes in an air show.
Before long, Mendoza, a psychology major from Piscataway, N.J.,
is backed up against the wall.

     "Well, now you're out of the room, Brother Mendoza," Oles
says matter-of-factly.

     Oles has led the team to 23 Mid-Atlantic Conference Fencing
Association championships in the last 26 years while being named
MACFA "coach of the year" eight times. The Blue Jays are 17-0
this year despite the loss of two starters from last semester.
"Sure, it's frustrating, getting yelled at, but you know it's for
your own good," Mendoza says, regaining his breath. "If you can
outsmart the coach, you can handle yourself with anyone."

     "The program speaks for itself," Oles says.

     True, considering almost the entire team had never fenced
before coming to Hopkins.

     "Of the 15 guys who write me from high schools," Oles says,
"maybe one will end up joining the team and staying. The rest
show up at our first meeting."

     "I think we've all seen too many Errol Flynn movies ... and
thought 'hey, fencing would be cool,'" says freshman David
Harris, a math/chemistry major from Lancaster, Pa. "Plus it's
great exercise."

     Upon joining the team, every fencer learns the sport from
the ground up, with basic footwork leading to advanced swordplay.
Each must run a six-minute mile, pass a written "rules test" and
know proper weapon repair before his first bout.

     "As a freshman you do this for six months," sophomore Darryl
Miao says, advancing and retreating while holding an imaginary
foil. "After that, you may get to hold a weapon."

     That is fencing at the junior varsity level, the only
Hopkins sport with such a program. JV fencers wear coats and ties
to meets, time each bout and practice. The following year, if
they come out for varsity, they begin a rigorous schedule. From
September, practice is two hours a day, nine hours each day of
intersession, with home and away meets on weekends.

     As a result, Oles says he has never had to cut a player from
the squad, no matter what his level. The program can shape a hard
worker into a good fencer but a "lazy kid doesn't stand a chance
and will walk. They psychologically weed themselves out."

     "The coach has a formula," says senior Tim Meyer, a
physics/math double major from Chicago. "It's earned Hopkins
fencing respect."

     Campus recognition, however, has been limited. Fencers
confess that only 10 to 20 fans attend an average home meet.

     "Even the football and lacrosse coaches who practice just
outside say they don't know where the fencing room is," Oles
says. (It's directly under the auxiliary gym.)

     He chalks this up to fencing's scant presence in college
athletics. Oles estimates that only 45 American colleges and
universities have varsity fencing teams.

     The sport itself, a derivative of the ancient art of sword
fighting, has been at Hopkins since 1897, one year after its
inclusion in the first modern Olympic games. Opposing teams field
three fencers in each of the three weapons classes (foil, �p�e
and sabre) and battle each other in 27 total bouts. The winner of
each bout is the first to score five "touches" on his opponent. 

     "For thousands of years, men have wanted to put three feet
of cold steel in their hand and fight," Oles says. "It is a
combat sport ... that has to be instilled in a fencer's head if
it's not there."

     Not surprisingly, no one accuses Coach Oles of playing with
a soft touch. 

     "He doesn't care how you're feeling," Mendoza says. "He'll
just say, 'get back in there and work.' "

     "Sure the coach is a bit of a hard-ass," Meyer says. "But we
all respect him a lot."

     Respect through old-fashioned blood and sweat casts Richard
Oles in the tradition of college football's great field generals
like Notre Dame's Knute Rockne and University of Alabama's "Bear"
Bryant. These men could shout down a bullhorn and wouldn't
hesitate to chew out any player, be he all-star or bench-jockey.
Why? It instilled the notion that everyone was equal. The team is
what mattered.

     Consequently, these are some of the most respected minds in
college sports, most of all by their players.

     "We're very superstitious of that Sports Illustrated cover
athletic kind of thing," says team captain Carl Liggio, a senior
from New York City. "You know, one player gets profiled and the
team loses ... we're very team oriented."

     "We're all really close since we spend so much time
together," Miao says. "It's almost like a fraternity except
without the pledging ... hard work on JV is our pledging."

     And yet, when asked how they fit in studying around
athletics, they respond in a way emblematic of the game itself--
intense but calm and precise. "I only lose two hours each day and
six on the weekends in study time," says senior Alan Benson, a
biophysics major from Arlington, Va. "We manage." 

     This weekend, the Blue Jays face the College of William and
Mary, their conference title rival for the last four years.

     "Every year, it's them going after us or us going after
them," Liggio says. 

     But today is Monday and that means practice. As the team
completes its warm-up, Coach Oles begins his.

     "How are those welts on your shoulder healing, Brother
Mendoza?"

     "Just fine, Coach."

     "Good. You'll be getting more today."

     "I look forward to it."

     And they laugh together, as a team.