The Ole Miss Fencers Club has emerged as a club on the rise with its recent increasing enrollment on The University of Mississippi campus.
Created in 1992, the club now shares several coaches from the nonuniversity Oxford Fencers Club, utilizing the OFC space for tournaments, according to the Ole Miss Fencing website. Pharmacology professor Dr. John “Doc” Matthews works with student leadership to run tournaments and classes.
Junior forensic chemistry major Kendall Wontor, who has has been on the team for nearly a month, said she’s “really enjoying the sense of team, even though it seems like an individual sport.”
According to senior geology major Becca Wall, members compete individually or as a team trying to garner an accumulative team score depending on the tournament.
Wall started fencing last year after taking the beginners fencing elective course with Matthews.
“Fencing for the first time was really fun, and I enjoyed learning something new and meeting a bunch of new people,” Wall said.
The team recently competed in the Tiger Open at the University of Florida Sept. 28-29.
Club president Dylan Wilmot said that although there are only 10 members currently in the fencing club, they were able to enter a male saber squad and a female saber squad.
“The men were able to defeat Miami, Clemson and Florida’s B team,” Wilmot said. “The female squad also defeated three out of their five opponents.”
The team travels to as many tournaments as it can afford. According to Wilmot, a senior human resources management major, the team is funded by the university’s intramural and sports club fund, ASB and Kabuki Japanese Restaurant, and oftentimes the team pays its own way.
The Fencing Club has taken to social media to increase awareness, often promoting upcoming events and fundraisers on its Facebook page.
Wilmot hopes the club will bring positive attention to the university from an unexpected place.
“We want to establish our sport club as one that continually produces fencers that can compete nationally, in the hopes of bringing Ole Miss recognition for a sport that it is not traditionally known for,” he said.
