Gareth Spiteri, an 11th-grader at BHS, began fencing when he was in Oak View School.
BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Bloomfield High School has a nationally ranked fencer. Eleventh-grader Gareth Spiteri, 16, began the sport with the township recreation department during the summer after his promotion from the third grade at Oak View Elementary School. He liked the sport enough to take lessons that paid off. For the last three years, he has been a nationally ranked fencer although the high school has no fencing team and his coach, Christian Rivera, is a BHS graduate.
There are three types of weapons used in fencing: the épée, foil and sabre. Gareth, a rightie, is trained on the épée. This is the most popular weapon among fencers. It has a straight blade about 36 inches long as does the foil. A sabre is shorter and has a curved blade — a reminder of its purpose as a slashing weapon used by a charging cavalryman.
Competitive scoring is different with each weapon. In épée fencing, the entire body is a target. In foil fencing, only touching an opponent’s torso will score a point. For both weapons, the opponent must be touched with the sword point to score. A person fencing with a sabre has an opponent’s entire body above the waist, including head and arms, as a target area. Scoring can be done with the point or the sword edge.
“The weapon my coach fenced with was the épée and he brought it to me,” Gareth said last week at the high school. “But I started with the foil. It’s a good introductory weapon.”
He was coached by Rivera in the Bloomfield recreation summer program and they have remained together since. After the summer program, Gareth took lessons with Rivera in the gym of the Brookdale Baptist Church. He then followed him to a new location in South Hackensack. Now he travels to NYC four times a week for a 30-minute lesson. After that he spends another two hours fencing other students and practicing footwork.
“It was fun for me to do it as a kid,” he said of the sport. “I just kept with it.”
The best way to make someone understand épée fencing, according to Gareth, is for the person to think of long distance running or boxing.
“The running because épée is the slowest of the three fencing weapons because you can hit the entire body,” he said. “This takes more time for the set-up and defense. It’s also like boxing because you’re faking out your opponent, setting them up and then hitting them the way you want to.”
He competed in his first national tournament while a sixth-grader. His ability and determination brought him far. He has competed abroad in Slovakia, Finland, Poland and Austria. In the United states he has had matches in Virginia, New Hampshire, Ohio, California, Michigan, Missouri, Maryland and Utah.
“This past year, I had a rough season and finished lower nationally than I expected,” he said. “I’m ranked ninth nationally.”
Gareth was in a fencing category called “cadets.” This is for competitors younger than 17. It was his final season at this level. With his birthday on May 19, he now becomes a “junior” since he will be older than 16, but younger than 20 by the next fencing season. And fencing season is long — nine months, from June to February for cadets and juniors — including world championships.
“The training never stops,” he said. “The goal is to make the world championships. Only the top three cadets and the top four juniors go to the championships. I was ranked third at the start of the season. But I lost a lot of close matches this season. I lost around four matches by a point. If I had won them, I would have been ranked third or fourth.”
Like in all one-on-one competitions, there are mismatches. Five points will end a match in certain épée competitions.
These matches are three minutes long. Still another type of épée match requires 15 points to win. For these, there are three, three-minute periods. In the event of a tie, the winner is chosen randomly. Gareth said he once won a match in 20 seconds. But if you are mismatched against a superior opponent, he said the best strategy is to score a point and defend, defend, defend.
“You have to be very dedicated to be a fencer,” he said. “It also takes coordination and quick thinking.”
With only a year remaining at BHS, Gareth said he would like to attend college at Notre Dame.
“They have one of the best fencing programs in the country,” he said.
His next tournament will be in St. Louis, at the end of June. He will be competing on the junior level for national ranking.
“As you go up in age,” he said, “the difficulties increase exponentially.”
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