The Mount Holyoke College Fencing club team competed at the United States Association of Collegiate Fencing Clubs’ College Fencing National Championships on April 9 and 10. Hosted at Rhode Island College, the competition saw Mount Holyoke face off against 38 other colleges and universities, including fellow Seven Sisters Smith College and Bryn Mawr College.
Pictured above: Fencing Club Team Practice in Kendall Gym. Photo courtesy of Sophia Karr ‘21.
By Gigi Picard ’22
Sports Editor
This edition’s team of the week is Mount Holyoke Fencing.
The fencing team is a sports club coached by Debra Basili with approximately 20 members, including team captains Eva Volckova ’22 and Morgan Sammut ’22.
Volckova explained the difference between club sports teams and varsity teams. “For many varsity teams, players must have years of experience in order to even be on the team, but with club sports, we anticipate that most people who join our club will not have prior experience,” she said.
Over the course of the semester, the team meets around twice a week on Zoom, but only on the weekends. Volckova stated that on Saturdays, the team does a workout along with a “Just Dance” break. Then, on Sundays, the team does bonding activities consisting mainly of trivia, “Among Us,” skribbl.io and other online games.
As stated by Volckova, the team is a tight-knit group. They stayed connected over the summer via group chat. They also had weekly trivia nights and consistent workouts multiple times a week. “Although we can’t fence each other, we spend a good portion of our workouts practicing footwork, which will put us in a great position once we are able to practice in person again,” Volckova said.
Sammut said, “Going to fencing practice is something that would always cheer me up on campus. Even when I was stressed with assignments, fencing practice was always a place where I could go and everything was suddenly better.” Volckova added that the team misses each other, feeling the loss of their “Yeah yoke” chants before tournaments and their post- tournament dinners together.
