Sophomore Fences On The National Level

The quick swoosh of swords intrigued sophomore Liam Murphy. He raced over to the bucket of wooden swords at the Renaissance Festival and playfully fought his friend. He jabbed out at his friend and then quickly blocked the ongoing attack. The match went on and on. Then he watched a duel between two men at the festival. He thought it was such a cool sport. Following the festival and at the age of eight years old, Murphy knew that he wanted to be a fencer.

He started learning more and more about fencing and then saw it was on the Olympics. This gave Murphy something to work towards and he began practicing. Murphy’s parents enrolled him at the Fencing Athletic Club of Kansas City. When he started fencing at the age of eight, he was practicing only a few times a week. After a few years, he became more committed.

He started practicing five days a week for three hours. Murphy helps teach the younger students but spends most of his time practicing for his next competition.

“I usually train even harder the week before a big tournament,” Murphy said. “I work on my fitness and best moves to perfect them.”

Not only does Murphy spend hours in the gym working on a specific moves but he also talks to his coach about how to improve. He is a fencing student of Coach Oleg Tretiak, who led the Ukrainian team to a silver medal finish in the 2000 Olympics.

The coach found potential in Murphy when he saw him coming to more practices and putting in a lot of extra time. The competitiveness and desire to do anything to win struck the coach. The drive that his coach sees helps when they are in one-on-one sessions because it proves that the time spent learning is worth it.

Murphy is not learning just fencing–he is practicing the specialization of sabre fencing. For his age division, they are to touch the other person with the sabre with a forward motion, with one touch equaling one point. Sabre fencing is faster paced and requires more physical endurance. This endurance helps him because there are multiple rounds in a competition so the fencers must be extremely fit.

Murphy has advanced to Nationals the past five years. He participates in youth circuits and has gone to the North American Cup four times. After fencing for a total of eight years, Murphy’s dedication to this sport is finally paying off: he has qualified for the Junior Olympics.

The Junior Olympics will take place in February in Dallas. Many countries will be participating in this so Murphy will be given the ability to perform on a whole new level. Murphy says that weird how he went from messing around at a festival to advancing to Junior Olympics and winning titles. Along with these national titles, Murphy also has never lost a local competition.

“The fact that I have not lost a local competition the past few years makes me feel great because it shows me that I really am good enough to fence on a higher level and it’s worth my time and money,” Murphy said.

The time spent on fencing is distributed to working out, developing basics such as pairing and attacking and developing a creative sense of fencing.

“I have somewhat invented my own style,” Murphy said. “I do a lot of reading about fencing techniques and have created my own way of doing things.”

His family has been extremely supportive in all aspects of his fencing career. Murphy recognizes that they have made the time, expense and effort to allow him to compete to travel all around the country.

He saves up his money to be able to afford what equipment he needs because he understands that fencing is an expensive sport. Murphy has over $1000 worth of equipment. His prized possession is a mask he bought himself. It was $500 and is an internationally-regulated mask. This allows him to participate in competitions all over the country.

Murphy is a division one fencer, and there are only 50 others in the country. Fourteen of them are in his 16-and-under division. He also qualified for the 18-and-under division in the Junior Olympics so he will be competing in both.

Murphy was ranked 18th in the nation last year. According to him, he has been offered several scholarships to participate on their fencing teams, including Penn State. He also turned down the opportunity to go to a boarding school in Chicago to fence there. According to Murphy, sometimes it is hard to take the time between fencing, school, debate and friends. But he understands that he has to give things up to maintain his priorities.

“For the most part, fencing is my priority” Murphy said. “I schedule other things around it but I feel like I usually find a way to juggle everything.”

Murphy is hoping to make this priority his best asset. Outside of fencing in college, Murphy hopes to possibly make it to the Olympics some day. Although he thinks he will take a break with fencing after college, he hopes he will always be able to pick up close to where he left off.

“Every guy’s goal is to be the man,” Murphy said, “and the way I would be the man is to be the best at what I do. My goal is to be the man and possibly find a way to get to the Olympics.”

Fencing is offered to all ages so Murphy is hoping that even if he takes a break, he will fence as an adult.

“Whenever I am not fencing for a period of time, I feel like I am missing something” Murphy said. “It’s what I do.”