10,000 Fencers! (Launching in 1 week!)

Dear Fencing Friends,

Let’s recruit 10,000 new fencers to our sport!  In one week, I will be launching a website called tenthousandfencers.com, a temporary page is up already, but the functional version is coming shortly, to be a portal for people who have never tried fencing to connect with the people who are dying to teach them! 

I am constantly running into people who are really excited about fencing and who have seen something on TV or read something online, but they didn’t realize that they can easily participate!  There isn’t an easily accessible site to promote our sport, athletes, or amazing coaches and clubs so I decided to do it with the help of Craig Harkins and fencing.net.  The campaign itself is called, “Ten Thousand Fencers”, and I hope it can become a movement to utilize the publicity and excitement around the Olympic games to recruit a whole new generation of fencers!

It’s going to be a grassroots network oriented recruiting effort that will allow people interested in trying fencing to easily find the resources and information they need to try it. Let’s stop wondering why no one is doing anything to promote or build our sport on a larger scale by taking matters into our own hands.  Fencers are known for their intelligence and strategy…let’s put those skills to use!

Now is the time to take our sport to the next level! Let’s recruit 10,000 new fencers together! Everyone can participate!  If you’re an individual fencer, bring a friend to your club and have them try it.  If you’re a parent of a fencer, ask your club about its new fencer programs!  My club, the Manhattan Fencer Center, recently started a program for the parents of the students who come to the Saturday class to learn how to fence!  If you’re a club, continue offering those great programs and encourage your members to bring in their friends. The possibilities are limitless for how we can do this!   One the website is up, have them register at tenthousandfencers.com and both the recruiters and new fencers will receive incentives and discounts.   I’ll be announcing more details on the site soon. This movement could be something really great if we all play even a small role! 

Tim Morehouse 2008 US Olympic Team Member/Founder 10,000 Fencers
www.tenthousandfencers.com
www.timmorehouse.com

The strategy:

I’m about to launch a website tenthousandfencers.com to be a hub for new fencers to learn about our sport. The site will be tailored to people who have never fenced before and will include information about fencing, a club directory with listings of clubs along with their new fencers classes and programs, along with other interesting articles to excite visitors about our sport

·      It will also be a hub for existing clubs and members to share stories about their recruiting efforts

·      We are going to ask new fencers to register at tenthousandfencers.com so we will have a scoreboard of how many fencers have tried fencing, who recruited them, what club they participated at, etc. We will track the top-10 clubs and individuals who bring in new fencers on the front page and offer prizes for the top recruiters! This will also allow us to actually track and have data on a larger scale about new fencers’ habits in regards to what is keeping them in the sport or not etc. that we can share to help you increase recruitment and retention

·     We are going to offer incentives for new people to try fencing, including discounts on equipment and fencing products, and participation in a new fencer newsletter to keep them posted on happenings with the Olympics. You can also offer incentives that we’ll will show on our website to entice new people. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see how each club in our country offers classes for new fencers? You soon will!

·       We’re also offering incentives for the fencing community to recruit fencers: publicity on our site, discounts on shipping of equipment, etc.

How you can paritcipate and what you need to do if you’re a club:

·       Let us know that you want to be a participating club member!

·       Send us your new fencer programs and classes and we’ll include your new classes, fees and times in our club directory and any incentives you have for people who have never tried the sport

·       Ask people who are trying fencing for the first time at your club to register their participation at tenthousandfencers.com

·       How far you go after that is up to you! You can run an event to recruit new fencers in conjunction with the Olympic games, ask each member to recruit one friend,etc.

How you can paritcipate and what you need to do if you’re an individual:

• Introduce someone to the sport and have them register at tenthousandfencers.com and Include your name as the recruiter and both you and they will receive discounts on fencing equipment, be entered into raffles, receive the 10,000 Fencers newsletter and more!
• The top-10 individual recruiters and clubs will be featured and recognized on the front page of tenthousandfencers.com!

What we will for the clubs who participate:

·       Utilize the publicity of the Olympic games to talk about trying fencing and this campaign.  I have already enlisted other Olympic team members and people in the fencing world to help with this effort

·       Utilize fencing.net to aggressively promote tenthousandfencers.com

·       Feature your club in our directory that will highlight your new fencer programs

·       Use our tenthousandfencers.com banner for your own promotional purposes

·       Provide you with a press release you can tailor to use for local media outlets

·       Provide you with materials you can send to your members to help you enlist them to recruit their family and friends to try fencing

·       Provide you with ideas for recruiting new members each week based on the successful strategies of other participating clubs

 

Interview with mouthpiecesports.com

Interview Part 1

Interview Part 2

Today Show/MSNBC Interview of Tim Morehouse

Fencer Tim Morehouse opens up about his favorite music, Teach For America, guilty food indulgence and more. He even sings his favorite karaoke song.

8 things you didn’t know about a fencer:

www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25276783#25276783

50 Days Until Opening Ceremonies!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO MADE THE “TEAM TIM” FUNDRAISER A HUGE SUCCESS!
It was really a magical night for me to have so many people who have influenced my life all in one room along with new friends and supporters.  To have my family and close friends along with my extended families at Teach For America, Brandeis, Riverdale Country School and Fencing, not to mention the members of the Salmagundi club in attendance made this night so special for me. I’m still blown away by the outpouring of support and can’t say thank you enough or how much it means to me to be able to share this dream and experience with everyone.  There were just over 100 people in attendance at the event and around 140 people total overall who offered support.  A special thank you to Ellen Stolzman and her family for helping to make this event a reality while I traveled around the world! THANK YOU THANK YOU!

You can check out pictures from the event here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2055362&l=61637&id=9804644

TRAINING UPDATE:
With 50 days until opening ceremonies my teammates and I are training hard. We have been having a training camp with the Ukrainian and Spanish National teams in New York City for the last 10 days as we prepare for the final Grand Prix World Cup in Las Vegas, Nevada next week as well as get ready for Beijing. Its been a really great experience to practice with so many of the worlds top fencers.  

10,000 NEW FENCERS CAMPAIGN!
I’m just about to launch a personal passion project to get 10,000 new people to fence in the United States in conjunction with the added media attention brought by Olympic Games to our sport.  I’m spear-heading this effort, but have some great partners who I’ll announce soon aiding me with this endeavor.  Needless to say, if you have never fenced before, you will be hearing from me soon! More details to come ina week!

MEDIA/WEBSITE UPDATE:

• I just posted some new material on my website: www.timmorehouse.com (The training section should be launched this week)
• http://fencing.usoc.org/athlete/videos/525 (United States Olympic Committee Website Interview. Video 1: I’m talking about Teach For America. Video 2: About how I started fencing)

Tim Morehouse Saber Training Video #1

The 1 Advance or Jump Lunge Game (aka The Glove Game)

Focus Areas: Footwork (Changing Directions, Sense of Distance, Explosive Lunge)

Appropriate Level: Advanced Beginner to Advanced

Summary/Rules:

The 1 advance or jump lunge game has very simple rules. Each fencer goes in-turn trying to hit the other with their glove to the stomach or chest using only an advance or jump lunge. The fencers will continue taking turns until one of them has landed and then they will begin again. You can play to a score of 3 or 5 and usually you trade off deciding who will go first. The fencer who is on the defense can move back as many steps as they want, but they want to control how far they go since in order to score they will need to be able to hit their opponent once they have completed their action. Some basic strategies include changing up the speed and length of the lunge on the attack and for the defender they can try to anticipate when and where their opponent is falling short and start their action immediately afterwards. The objective of the game is to get really good at making your opponent think they can reach you, but ultimately having them end up just short so you can hit them just your arm or with an advanced lunge. This is a great and essential game for saber fencers to master.

Olympic Countdown: Spain/Italy World Cups

Hi from Venice!

With 66 days to go until opening ceremonies, my game is slowly rounding back into shape. Over the the last 11 days we’ve been on the road competing in world cups in Madrid, Spain and Padova, Italy with a camp in-between in Madrid with the Spanish, Romanians and German teams. I finished 36th in Madrid and 11th in Italy. After my result in Italy, I’m again ranked #1 in the United States and moved up to 15th in the world. We have a training camp in NYC with the Ukrainian and Spanish national teams in a week and then compete again in 3 weeks in the final Grand Prix before the Olympics in Las Vegas. Can’t wait to fence in the USA!

Stubborness sends me to an early exit in Madrid…
I fenced a very stubborn match and perhaps let my ego get the better of me in my first round match. My opponent, Lam from Hong Kong, started hitting me on this action where he flicks his blade over my guard and hits my wrist during my long attack, called a flick stop cut. I could have stopped attacking him and taken away his opportunity to do this move on me, but instead I felt like he shouldn’t be able to hit me with this so I kept attacking! Great idea, right? There was really no reason for me to keep going forward and my defense was working, but I kept trying over and over again to make it work and to prove to myself that I could hit him on my attack instead of acknowledging the reality of the situation Good things were happening in other places, but I couldnt let it go and instead I chose to try to win in the lowest percentage area against this fencer. The result was a 9-15 loss with him hitting me with 7 flick stop cuts. While I beat myself in this match, there was some upside in that hopefully I learned my lesson and also that I felt “right” for the first time since surgery and my strength areas were working, I just didn’t allow myself to use them in the match.

Lesson applied in Italy with better results…
I wrote a note to myself before I started fencing in this competition to, “fence my game”. Meaning use my defense, even if I lost doing it, its still the best chance for me to win matches consistently and of course I had much better result! In defeating Moreno of Spain in the bracket of 64, 15-10, I stayed in the places where I scored at the higher percentages. In my next draw, I drew Bukievich from Belarus who has a really strong defense including a very good flick stop-cut Let’s just say, I stayed away from situations where he could hit me on this move! I was losing 9-13 to him, but then was able to storm back with some strong defense on my end and win 15-13. I lost my next bout to #8 ranked Dumitrescu of Romania to make the quarter finals. He has one of the odder styles in the fencing world right now. He likes to take one step forward and then stop in place and just look at you. Most people have something prepared that they do to make their opponent react or to fake them out, but not him. He fences totally on reflexes and he takes no action at the start. He just waits and wants you to go first and initiate. My strategy was to try to wait him out and over the first part of the bout I would take one step forward and stop to wait for him. I was doing pretty well with this strategy until he started waiting even longer than me and then I let the one time he made an aggressive move off the blocks scare me into going faster. The reality was that he only went aggressive this one time for the purpose of scaring me into going first and it worked. It was really uncomfortable for me to to wait since you just never have this kind of situation and since he hit me on the aggressive move I tried counter moves I would normally do to slow an opponent down who is running, except that he never ran at me again and so the counter moves just let him react to me initiating the action. I’ll need to get more comfortable with waiting with him if I’m going to beat him next time we fence and he will be at the Olympics. The final score was 10-15 plus some good insights for the future.

Watch my bouts with Moreno and Bukievich in Italy!