Dion Shively Quotations

When he was in his late 60s, he was still beating us young kids who thought we were hot stuff, but was still nice enough to work with us and help us along. So I always had it in the back of my mind that there was this Zen kind of philosophy, this martial arts aspect to fencing.

How you like to style your fencing is really up to your temperament. Some people are aggressive and tend to move around a lot; some people are very passive and let their opponents make the first move. No two people fence entirely alike. It's one of the things that makes it so interesting.

Jason has found a lifelong hobby as well as a great form of exercise. He lost 80 pounds since we opened the club.

Sport fencing is very different from what you see in movies. In fencing, the moves are small and tricky. In the movies, the moves are big and flashy. They're meant to show well before the camera. Actors are trying to look good and not hit somebody. Fencers are trying to hide what we're doing and hit somebody. We try to look good at what we do, but we don't want to telegraph any big, flashy moves because that makes it easier for your opponent to hit you. There has to be a certain subtlety to it.

We have all the fencing equipment here, so it costs nothing for people to stop in and try it out. They don't have to purchase anything, and we don't do long-term contracts, either. So it's easy for people to try it for a few weeks or months.

We still have a long way to go. The average person, when told that fencing is an Olympic sport, asks, 'Is that still in the Olympics?' It's been in every Olympics there has ever been in the modern age. There's fencing in every summer Olympics and it never gets televised. There's no fencer who is a household name. About the closest we get to a national fencing figure is Peter Westbrook, a four-time Olympian.

We attract a different crowd than mainstream sports. We tend to get the people who never exercised, or thought of themselves as athletes, or ever considered taking up any sport. It appeals to the romantic as well as the intellectual side in a lot of us. We get a decent cross mixture of people, a lot of dreamers, gamers and other types.

We don't require that people compete here. I'm here for the people who want to get really, really good at this and compete in it, but we're also here for the people who just want to come in and get some exercise, blow off some steam, or just come in and have a really good time.

What appealed to me is what hooks most people, and that's Hollywood. 'Zorro,' 'The Three Musketeers,' even the sword-fighting stuff from 'Star Wars.' It hits the fantasy button in all of us. Every boy at some point grabs a stick and tries to sword-fight his friends with it in the back yard. We all have that kid inside of us who dreams of knights and sword fighters.

We are a member club of the United States Fencing Association, which governs fencing throughout the country. That means we can hold tournaments and our members can go to tournaments. Many clubs throughout the country host tournaments on a fairly regular basis. Most tournaments are in Pittsburgh or State College, a few in Cleveland and Harrisburg or anywhere that's got fencing. We also go down to West Virginia frequently.

I've actually seen kids who have bad attitudes or temper problems come into fencing and I've seen them leave with much more self-control and self-respect. I've seen them go from really lousy kids to pretty nice people, people I could respect. I think fencing can have an uplifting effect on the soul. It's very much a Western martial art.

The best thing about this sport is that you can do it all your life. I know people who started fencing when they were 70 years old. This is a sport where using your head really counts. 'Physical chess' is a term that's been frequently applied to fencing. Really, the mind is the most important weapon you have in this sport.

In fencing, it's just you and your opponent. You don't have teammates you can blame. You usually don't have a referee to blame. You either win or you don't. Every time you go out there, it's a test of your own skill and ability and how hard you work.

In America, when people dueled, they would use pistols. We didn't have fencing schools where gentlemen went to learn the sword. In Europe they had that, and those schools became the basis of the fencing clubs they still have today.

I named it the Zen Fencing Academy for my hero, a gentleman by the name of Joe Odom, who sadly passed away last year. He was my role model as a fencer and as an instructor. He founded a club in Pittsburgh, Fencers For Fun, as a method of keeping kids off the streets. He always came to (Indiana University of Pennsylvania) to help us out because we didn't have a coach. We always referred to him as the 'Zen master of fencing'. He was that wise old Pat Morita kind of character.

If you watch a football game or a baseball game, you don't see sportsmanship like this. In fencing you've got to salute your opponent before every match, and you've got to shake hands. These are the rules.

You will find a few of them, but in fencing they are a much smaller percentage than in any other sport.