Reflections on a successful term:

With the arrival of Rhys Melia in February, my Monday night became filled with blades (and Tuesday morning with bruises!). Rhys quickly taught the fundamentals of fencing and despite new people joining at different stages (we had lots of groups of fencers with different abilities) this was no trouble for Rhys, who has been bought up within ‘Team Melia’ a successful family of fencers. However his personal goals on the fencing piste took him to International Competitions, training weekends and most recently the World Championships in France. Consequently, Lynne Melia took over from Rhys as coach, and is also now coaching Inglefield House.

In October, Hayley attended a ‘Team Melia’ training camp, involving four days of six-hour fencing training sessions, fitness and competition strategy. “It was fantastic” she said. “I became completely immersed in fencing, and the Melia’s were great, organising things to do in the evenings on top of everything else.” Hayley, and some other fencers are intending on attending the next ‘Christmas’ Team Melia camp, in December. The camps are international, with Fencers from France, Hungary, and Italy, offering our fencers a huge opportunity to fence with a variety of different people.

Having mastered the basics, many of our Fencers intend to compete in the New Year, so to them I wish the best of luck!