The Club

The club began in 2004 as the Santa Barbara Youth Fencers. We rented space at Studio E in the Funk Zone and later moved to the YMCA. In 2006 we leased a larger, full-time space and changed our name to Presidio, identifying ourselves as an outpost for sport fencing in Santa Barbara County.

From 2011-2019, we also helped with Presidio North in the Santa Ynez Valley.

In the post-Pandemic world, the club has downsized considerably. Most of our fencers are recreational athletes, coming to practices simply to break a sweat. A few of us travel to Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and elsewhere in the country for competition. To better represent that we are a collection of Santa Barbarians practicing without a permanent base, we changed our name in 2025 to Santa Barbara Fencers Club.

Fencing is a great sport for athletes in middle school and high school. Upon graduation, our young fencers have gone on to compete at various NCAA and Collegiate Clubs.

The Sport of Fencing

Although swordplay has been around since ancient times, it was not until the 18th Century that equipment was safe enough for sport, and rules of engagement were codified. 

What developed was the basis for modern fencing, one of a few sports to appear in every Olympics since 1896. It is a fast, athletic game, made up of three events:

Foil employs rules of right of way. The fencer who starts to attack first is given priority should his opponent counter-attack. 

An electrical scoring system detects hits on valid target. Each foil has a blunt, spring-loaded button at the point of the blade that must be depressed with a pressure of 500 grams or more to register a hit. The foil fencer's uniform features an electrically wired metallic vest called a lame - a hit to the lame causes the scoring machine to display a colored light on the side of the fencer that scored the touch.

 There is no concept of "off-target" in epee. Some people refer to epee as "Freestyle Fencing" because anything goes.

In saber, the target area is the entire body above the waist, excluding the hands. In addition, saber has rules of right of way which are very similar to foil but with subtle differences.

The above images and information are provided with thanks from US Fencing. Visit their website for more information.

In Santa Barbara, we primarily focus on epee in our drill classes. Some adults, especially those intermediate and advanced fencers with prior experience, continue to focus on foil during sparring sessions.