About

The Drexel Fencing Club (DFC) was founded in 2011 by Kyla Lafond and is currently led by President Dahrah Muhammad. We are a friendly, out-going group, and we pride ourselves on being welcoming to both new and veteran fencers. Anyone can join; no experience is necessary! Our coach, Ahren La Londe, is well-versed in all three fencing weapons, but new fencers will typically start learning foil as the skills are easily transferable to the other two weapons.

The Drexel Fencing Club is a mostly learning club where we teach everything as a basic level. This means lessons will more likely reflect more basic skills such as how to advance, retreat, thrust, and lunge and perfecting those actions. However, throughout the year, Coach Ahren encourages playing around with these ideas, timing, and distance to advance your fencing. It is the expectation that older, experienced fencers will take up leadership roles to correct and show newer fencers more advanced techniques when they are read.

The club is a part of the Baltimore-Washington Collegiate Fencing Conference (BWCFC) and participate in their tournaments. BWCFC is DFC’s main conference, but the club is also invited to other collegiate competitions such as Temple Open and USACFC. As the club grows, the E-Board will be looking for more opportunities for our fencers to fence.

In addition to being a part of BWCFC, the Drexel Fencing Club is an USFA member club. While not necessary to learn how to fence at Drexel, many of our captains will highly recommend obtaining membership for not only insurance but also for further opportunities to fence. The Philadelphia Division often hosts many tournaments through the year, and it provides our fencers a chance to fence fencers outside the collegiate environment.

While fencing in all year-round sport, our competitive schedule is mainly from Fall Term to Spring Term. For students who are on campus for the Summer Term, conditioning will be our main focus. For more information about our club, fencing at Drexel, or comments in general, please contact us at drexelufencing@gmail.com.