Gillingham Charter School is bringing fencing to Schuylkill County.
The charter school held an assembly Wednesday to gain student interest and two men from the Richmond Fencing Club, Richmond, Va., Tom Lucent and Michah Powell, demonstrated the sport.
Ryan Robbins, athletic director at Gillingham, said that Robert Woodcock, Minersville, will be coaching the students. It will initially be a club, then they will form a competitive team next school year.
The sport will be for students in grades nine through 11.
Woodcock, who was a part of the Richmond Fencing Club before he moved back to the area, said that he learned to fence in college and stuck with it.
Woodcock told students that fencing is a safe sport, is scored electrically, thanks to a machine hooked up to the athletes that tells when a part of the body is hit, and it is the only sport contested at every Olympic games since its revival in Athens, Greece, in 1896.
"We plan on starting it after Thanksgiving break," Robbins said. "Right now, there are no other fencing teams in the area."
During the assembly, Robbins said that the school is hoping other schools will see that Gillingham is starting a team and that they will start their own teams.
"We're not going to be competing outside the school until the earliest next school year," Woodcock said. "After that, it's up in the air."
Woodcock said that the first couple months will be spent working on basic footwork and learning the basics.
"The motions involved, the steps, the actions, none of that is natural to any other sport or everyday life, so it has to be taught, retaught and relearned," Woodcock said. "Footwork happens at every practice, whether you're a novice or you're an Olympic-style fencer."
He intends for the fencing team to practice year-round or during the entire 10-month school term.
In college, fencing is a winter sport, but is practiced all year since it is an indoor sport.
Gillingham is purchasing the equipment for the sport, with a $360,000 Federal Charter School Implementation Grant that it was awarded last year, according to newspaper archives.
The school said that $30,000 of that funding is being used to purchase equipment.
In October 2012, the U.S. Department of Education awarded 20 grants totaling nearly $4 million to directly fund charter developers for the planning, program design and implementation of new charter schools, and the sharing of practices and dissemination of information by successful charter schools.
"Fencing is an expensive sport," said Christie Werkheiser, director of Organizational Development at Gillingham. "With this grant, we'll be able to give our students a unique opportunity that other schools do not offer."
Along with fencing, the charter school currently offers two other competitive sports, archery and basketball.