PEABODY — City residents may not be aware, but Peabody is home to a fencing club that has been challenging its members for more than 60 years to fleche, flunge, parry, lunge and allez.
The Tanner City Fencers Club, founded in 1958 by Peabody firefighter Joe Pechinsky,
has helped generations of young athletes fall in love with fencing, a relatively niche sport. The club’s members are not only passionate and knowledgeable about fencing, but they’re extremely good at it, with many of them going on to compete on the national and international stage.
From 1968 to 1992, every U.S. Olympic fencing team included at least one club member who was trained by Pechinsky.
One of those students was Jane Carter. She started fencing as a 13-year-old, after she and a friend failed to make the middle-school basketball team.
“The two of us went and signed up and both of us pushed each other,” Carter said. “It was like ‘are you tired? No, I’m not tired. Are you tired? No, I’m not tired.’ We pushed each other and kept going back. Once we met Joe, he changed our lives.”
That’s putting it mildly. Fencing has taken Carter all over the world. She went on to fence at the University of Pennsylvania, where she became a three-time All-American and led the Quakers to a national championship in 1986. A member of the U.S. National Team from 1990-96, Carter helped the national Veterans World Championship team to a bronze medal in 2019 and a gold medal in 2017 — a year when she also captured the silver medal as an individual. Carter has also represented the U.S. on multiple Senior World Championship teams and won a team gold medal at the Pan-American Games in Cuba in 1991. Carter also won an individual gold medal at the Under-19 Pan American Fencing Championships in 1987 and collected a silver medal in the team competition at the Junior World Championships in Stuttgart, Germany in 1986.
The program only costs a “nominal” fee, Carter said, and equipment is provided for the aspiring fencers. She described the club as a starter club to introduce kids to the sport and eventually send them to bigger and more competitive clubs.
At Tanner City, fencers not only learn the basic moves, but they also are introduced to the unusual vocabulary associated with the sport — words not normally used in common dialogue.
While the sport dates back to at least 1200 B.C., it was the French Academy in the 16th century that began to develop the unusual fencing terms commonly used today— many of which are French words or derivatives.
The most well-known term, no doubt, is “en garde,” the first in a sequence of commands that signals the start of a bout.
Carter noted that in the last 10 to 15 years, there has been a demographic change in fencing. Once considered an elitist sport, fencing today appeals to children from diverse backgrounds, some of whom are using the sport to get into college. Carter noted a study showing that 36 percent of children who fenced in high school went on to fence in college.
While Carter loves coaching the sport, she said an added benefit is it provides her with “stress relief.”
“Coaching, for me, has always been what I love,” she said. “Especially taking those little kids who maybe didn’t fit in a team sport, maybe hadn’t developed yet like some of those natural athletes do in baseball and swimming; taking them and showing that they are athletes and that they can do something really cool and unique.”
Interested individuals can sign up through the Recreation Department at https://peabodyma.myrec.com/info/activities/program_details.aspx?ProgramID=29915. Sessions are held at the Higgins Middle School on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m.
Sam Minton can be reached at [email protected].
