En Garde! The UW-Platteville Fencing Club invites you to stab your buddy.

Fencing doesn’t rely so much on physical strength, it’s mostly about reflexes and trying to outwit your opponent Kasmir Siekierzynski, senior Fencing Club president, said.

“Everybody picked up a stick and pretended it was a sword growing up,” Siekierzynski said.

The club was brought back into existence in the spring of 2006 after a brief hiatus, Siekierzynski said. This year, the club has about twelve members. The fencers meet for two to three hours every Tuesday night in Southwest Hall’s multipurpose room. The meetings consist of warm-ups, learning new techniques, perfecting old ones and bouts. The last part of the meeting is devoted to fencing games. The club is open to anyone on campus.

“We are always looking for new members,” Krystle Kurdi, a senior who helped re-establish the club and is in charge of public relations for the club, said. “We recruit through posters throughout campus and putting on demos.”

There are many different types of fencing styles, such as Eppe, Saber and Foil. Military is another style in which you are not allowed to use any part of your body that gets stabbed, Siekierzynski said.

“If you get touched on the leg, you have to hop, and if you get stabbed in both arms you’ve pretty much lost,” Siekierzynski said.

The club consists of different skill levels from members who have several years of experience to others that have just started this semester.

Joe Holloway, vice president of the Fencing Club, had no experience with the sport before joining the club.

“It wasn’t difficult for me to learn the sport at all, actually, and I’m glad I joined,” Holloway said.

The club plans on having a tournament between its members this semester and is working on participation in another tournament off campus before the end of the year.

Before entering a tournament, the team has to obtain the electric equipment that is worn to ensure the accuracy of scoring during official fencing competitions.

The club is funded by SUFAC and hopes to purchase the necessary equipment with that money.