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04/28/2023 07:44 AMHaving strong coaching and leadership is crucial to sporting a successful team in any sport. No matter if someone is a head coach or an assistant, they have unique experience and knowledge to bring to the table that can help lead a team to prominence.
This can be said for North Haven assistant fencing coach Stu Holmes, who brought his passion for the sport of fencing to the strip this winter to help steer the ship for the Nighthawks.
Stu has been coaching with North Haven for two seasons after fencing at the high school level on Long Island, and even more competitively in college for the Sacred Heart University Pioneers in Fairfield, Connecticut.
“I was lucky enough on Long Island that my high school had fencing, and it was really just my friends doing it. They started before me their freshman year,” says Stu. “They pushed me to start, and I joined my sophomore year. I have loved it ever since.”
Stu has also fenced at the national level for the past 11-12 years, and North Haven fencing Head Coach Jim Harris feels that the pressure he faced when competing at such a high level has allowed him to teach the kids on the high school team to not fold under that pressure.
“Stu brings so much to the team on a daily basis. First off, he is a high-level competitor himself, so he can talk to the students about what it takes to reach that level nationally,” says Harris. “He brings a passion for the sport that translates to the kids and everything that he does. He also brings a real caring compassion for the kids as well; he has been a fantastic addition to the team.”
As a leader and mentor for the students hoping to improve their fencing skills daily, Stu tries to preach the mental aspect of the sport, knowing it is just as important as anything physical on the strip.
“Fencing at the national level takes a lot of time and dedication. It is not just physical preparation; it is mental preparation. A lot of the tactics and strategies that I have learned helped me be successful as a competitor,” says Stu. “I try to bring that back to all of our student-athletes at North Haven. I try to educate some of the ways that they can prepare not just for the actual competition, but also the mental preparation, recognizing that all of the student-athletes are unique individuals.”
Harris notes that Stu’s role with the Nighthawks for the past two seasons has been primarily coaching the foil squads but that he bounces around to assist with all disciplines.
“His primary focus is the foil squads,” Harris says. “He also provides assistance to all of the squads and has helped redesign some of our conditioning program, like footwork.”
Besides helping the athletes to improve the skills necessary to be successful in fencing as a team, Stu also takes great care in the growth of each individual, taking the time to learn their strengths and weaknesses.
“Both Coach Harris and I are trying to establish a culture of hard work and dedication to this sport,” Stu says. “When you are there, you are there to work on improvement not just for yourself but for everyone else, as well as having fun. Along with that, I am really trying to understand each individual to see what they want from fencing, how they think of their own fencing, and try and find the things that they do well. Then try to expand upon those things to make sure that every fencer on the team feels valued.”
Along with coaching for the Nighthawks, Stu was also an assistant fencing coach for the Pioneers for three years after he graduated from college and currently coaches at Silver City Fencing Club in Wallingford, a place he has been with since 2016. Despite having such a decorative resume, Stu finds that the sport of fencing is constantly evolving so he has to keep his head on a swivel and make adjustments to the strategies he’s preaching, and remain positive even when hitting a roadblock.
“There are a lot of things with fencing. Strategies, techniques that tend to be successful change over time, especially as the United States Fencing Association changes rules. It is about making adjustments to your own techniques and strategies,” says Stu. “Personally, for me, I have had a history of injuries. That takes a physical and mental toll on you. It is getting out of that funk and doing what it takes to stay mentally focused when physically, you may have to take a back seat. That has probably been the biggest challenge for me.”
Stu’s ability to be a successful coach at both the club and high school levels is something few people are able to match due to the fact that they are very different environments.
“In the club environment, you may have that fencer for eight or nine years, whereas in high school, it is a completely different thing. You only have them for four years and maybe even sometimes less,” says Stu. “I would say the big challenge for me, especially for my first year, is I have now 30 or so fencers that I have never worked with before. It is about taking the time to learn everything about them, how they want to fence, what they do well, and then using that to help them grow. That was probably the biggest challenge for me and having to do that quickly.”
As Stu continues to assist Harris in producing strong fencers at North Haven High, Harris is excited to see the team’s ceiling with Stu at the helm.
“Going forward, I am excited to lean on him as both of us try to get the team to the next level. He has a lot of great ideas, a lot of passion and energy for the team, and I just really look forward to working with him,” says Harris. “I think that he deserves the recognition for the amount of effort that he puts into the team on a day-to-day basis. I am incredibly impressed by Stu both as a coach and as a person.”
Stu hopes to continue to help each individual fencer develop and wants to be able to look back with pride on the progression of their fencing careers as they close out their chapters with the Nighthawks.
“I love seeing the fencers grow over time; that is something that I absolutely love to see,” Stu says. “As I continue to coach more and more with North Haven, working with some of the same students each year, seeing how they progressed from the very beginning where I first met them to the point where they graduated, it is just an incredibly rewarding