Sword Fighting

By Randy Horick

A chauffeur brings a highly rated athlete to practice here almost every other day. But it’s not what you think. The athlete, Case Szarwark—a fencer who is ranked second in the nation in her division for her event, the épée—is not yet old enough to drive alone. The chauffeur is her mother.

If it seems unusual that a world-class competitor needs to arrange to call Mom to pick her up after practice, as she did one day last week, well, Szarwark is not your usual world-class competitor. A 15-year-old high school freshman, she recently won the silver medal at the Junior Olympic National Fencing Championships, where she defeated, among others, the under-20 Pan American champion.

In March, she was in Germany, for fencing’s World Cup, where she finished among the top 32.

This week, she’s in South Bend, Ind., competing in the under-17 age division at the Junior World Championships—the most prestigious event in which she has participated so far. For Szarwark, the site is an apt one, since South Bend, her old hometown, was where she took up fencing after witnessing a demonstration at her school.

Though it represents a sort of homecoming, she hasn’t decided whether the prospect of performing on such a relatively exposed stage is more exhilarating or intimidating. ”Definitely a lot of both,“ she says.

”It’s the biggest tournament I’ve ever played in. It’s all a little overwhelming. But it’s also exciting. I’m going to try to take this tournament as a learning experience.“

To keep things in perspective, Szarwark has been fencing in tournaments for only three-and-a-half years. And this is not a sport, like women’s tennis or gymnastics, that is dominated by teenagers.

The average Olympian in fencing is over 30, points out Szarwark’s coach, Doug Harris. The current world champion in the épée, a Frenchwoman, is 33. And one of the members of the United States fencing team at the Atlanta Olympic Games was 53.

Among the 10 juniors from Nashville competing in South Bend this week, Harris says, Case is not only the youngest but among the last to have taken up the game.

Her relative inexperience and rapid ascent (she has climbed from 27th to second in the rankings since the season began) make Szarwark something of a sword-wielding prodigy. She’s blessed with unusual height (5 feet 10 inches), strength, and quickness. In fact, notes Harris, Case can simply overpower many male fencers in practices.

But both she and her coach agree that fencing, even more than a test of agility and skill, is a battle of minds. ”It’s great mental exercise,“ Case says. ”You have to concentrate on staying relaxed. And you have to figure out what your opponent is trying to do and adjust to it.“

During a lesson with Harris, Szarwark alternates between jabbing for the chest and striking at the feet. (Epée differs from foil, one of fencing’s other events, in that the former allows competitors to score touches on the entire body, not just within a restricted target area.) She seeks to vary her point of attack, to keep her opponent guessing and off-balance, in much the same way that pitchers in baseball change speed and locations to prevent hitters from settling into a rhythm.

It’s the mental part that coach and pupil want to improve most. In Germany, Szarwark battled one of the world’s top-ranked players evenly for part of the match, until she was unable to overcome her more focused, experienced opponent. This week, she’ll attempt to maintain a relaxed intensity—the seemingly paradoxical combination of attributes she’ll need to advance.

”She’s on the skill level where she needs to be,“ says Harris. ”But we’ve never seen how she performs under this kind of pressure.“

The coach is reluctant to divulge how good his 15-year-old student ultimately can be. She’ll attend the Olympic trials in July, but Harris doesn’t expect her to earn a spot on the U.S. fencing team that will compete in Sydney. The games of 2008, he says, should be a different case, with a different, more experienced Case.

Between now and then, the regimen of eight hours of fencing practice a week will continue. Plus the weight lifting and cross training. And the tournaments that have taken her from California to Florida and from Minnesota to Texas. And tennis. And so much studying. Oh, and drivers’ ed.

It’s an awesome amount to keep up with. So much so that, like many young teenage girls, Case is forever scrawling notes on her hand.

During a chat with a visitor, she suddenly produces a ball-point pen and jots down another memo on one inkless space of her left palm. Perhaps it’s a reminder to phone Mom for the ride home.