Best Boarding School for Fencing?

QueueCT
Mon, 30 Aug 2021 22:06:39 +0000

This isn’t fencing specific but my DD1 is extremely active in a spring sport and has been playing up two age levels for club teams. She’s starting 9th grade at a BS with Saturday classes. I didn’t ask enough detailed questions about playing club during the fall season. The coach indicated that they were very supportive of club players, blah blah blah, but when we started coordinating with programs over the summer regarding practice time and tournaments for the fall we found out that there were differing expectations between us and the administration.

While the club team has been very flexible regarding missing practices, tournament availability, etc, the BS has been less so about missing school events. We’ve come to an arrangement, but it was difficult. In fairness, I will say that the difficulties were based on the BS wanting to ensure 1) DD1 was prepared for the additional load at BS and not getting overwhelmed and 2) ensuring solid entry into the social and cultural aspects of the school.

Truthfully, once I considered afternoon program from 3-4:30, club practice from 5:30-7:30, study hall from 8-10, missed Saturday classes and missed Sunday homework/social time for tournaments, plus my DD1’s propensity for procrastination, I realized that they were right. We just didn’t figure that out at the front end. We’ve dialed it back to 1 practice during the week and tournaments roughly every other weekend.

I say all this to make sure you ask the detailed questions that we didn’t when evaluating a school and that you consider the impact of practice/training on your daughter’s success at a boarding vs day school.