Celtic Sword Club

The club, called Celtic Sword Club is based in the Gorseinon Development Trust building at Canolfen Gorseinon, meeting from 6:30 to 9:30 on Wednesday evenings.

We have been running now for 3 years with great success, our medal haul at junior competitions is remarkable for such a young club as is our representation at the British Youth Championships in Sheffield, for the last 2 years!

We currently have 3 fully qualified coaches as well as a number of assistants at the club and can cater for a range of ages and abilities. Faith coaches Foil, Gareth coaches Epee and Steve does Sabre, although all three do class lessons and can all teach Foil as required.

We are very busy and although we would like to take new members, we have a waiting list and currently,  only run 1 new beginners course every year. We have limited our membership to 40 due to limitations imposed on us by the size of the venue available to us and Britsh Fencing guidelines on coach to coachee ratios.

The club has had links with a number of Swansea comprehensive schools under the 5x60 initiative and the club kit initially purchased was made available at the schoold for classes, maximising use of this valuable resource.

We were very lucky to receive a grant from the Welsh Sports Council to start the club and initially bought over £7,000 worth of new equipment, and we are now able to cater for juniors ( 9 to 12) and seniors (13 to 80!) at the new club. Both beginners and experienced fencers can be accommodated and coached to whatever level they require. The grant has allowed us to keep costs down, we only have to pay for the room hire as all coaches time is given freely, in fact fencing with us for a month  is less than the cost of a curry  and makes you fit not fat!

With 3 coaches we are able to  deal with classes for different age groups at the same time as well as able to cater for mixed ability groups.

In fact the ethos of the new club is to encourage fencing for fitness not just to cater for those who wish to compete. However this has tended to breed competition success, so it works! We encourage competition not force it on members and this is how we intend to continue.

We encourage families to take up fencing, and when we had only been up and running for just a few months we already had 4 families fencing with us!  Additionally we have a range of ages and abilities fencing with us, including two Welsh youth Internationals and a International veteran, and beginners from the age of 9!

We would welcome “old” fencers from the Swansea and surrounding areas who would like to return to fencing after perhaps fencing with the Swansea or Port Talbot clubs some years ago, and are looking for a friendly re-introduction to the sport, or who would like to re-enter the sport as a coach or helper at the club, everyone is welcome!

It is unusual to find a sport where mother, father and children can compete at the same level and we encourage mothers and fathers to join in when they bring their sons or daughters along.