Foil fencers who have volunteered to attend the Foil Exchange at St Aloysius’ College this Saturday:

The event will start at 8:00am and will wrap up at around 11:30am.

St Aloysius’ College’s venue information can be found in the following document:

NSW Schools Fencing League – Boys Team Foil Premiership 2018 Schedule, Venue and Contact Information

Please arrive at least 30 minutes before the start time (be there by 7:30am) to warm up and help our hosts set up if needed.

Coach Feng and myself will be attending to supervise and mark the roll.

Please let me know if there are any issues or questions.

Cheers,

Dat Huynh

MIC Fencing

Hi all,

This is just a notice that there will be no training or events on over the long weekend.

The next training session will be on Wednesday 13/06/18.

I hope you have an enjoyable, relaxing and safe break!

Cheers,

– Dat Huynh

MIC Fencing

To all fencers from years 10 to 12,

The National School Championships event for senior students (10 to 12) will be held at NSWFA over the weekend of the 28th and 29th of July, 2018.

If you have fenced in the Roberta Nutt this year and wish to nominate yourself for the National School Individual Championships, please see Mr Huynh to put your name down ASAP. I will be submitting the list of SBHS nominations to NSWFA on Friday.

NSWFA will process all nominations and inform SBHS as to who will be able to compete in the National School Individual Championships based on availability of places and your ranking from the Roberta Nutt.

Note:

SBHS will not be participating in the National School Team Championships this season due to the changes in the multi-week NSWFA team program qualifying criteria.

I understand that some may be upset by this. I urge you to remember that our primary goal is to teach and nurture scholar sportsmen – not to chase medals. We work on providing quality training and nurturing the development of skills for our students. When we focus on the quality of the training program, the medals will follow.

P.S. I will be reviewing and updating our program objectives at the end of this season to reflect this philosophy more accurately.

Please let me know if there are any issues or questions.

-Dat Huynh

MIC Fencing

SBHS hosted St Ignatius’ College Riverview on the weekend in our Great Hall for Exchange #3. It was the first time we have fenced Riverview and we hope to build upon this positive relationship in future seasons.

Thank you to our guests for being great sports and to our Parent Committee for organising the morning tea.

All students on the shortlist for the U16 Foil Team try-outs, please attend the Monday (04/06/18) training session (3:30pm to 5pm) to complete the ranking pool sheet. Year 9 students on the shortlist do not have to attend Sprints for the week.

Please let me know if there are any issues or questions.

-Dat Huynh

MIC Fencing

The U14 Foil Team try-outs will be conducted this Saturday from 9:30am to approx. 12:30pm at the COLA.

Students who have been shortlisted, please arrive at least 30 minutes early to warm up and help set up the scoring boxes.

Thank you to the students who have volunteered to help referee the event.

-Dat Huynh

MIC Fencing

Firstly, I would like to congratulate Marcus Nguyen, Owen Zhang, Lachlan Ho and Aaron Martano for their outstanding achievements in the NSWFA U18 team foil competition over the weekend. The boys formed their own independent team and worked hard throughout their competition to win Silver.

I’d like to take this opportunity to bring the issue of school representation to attention.

At the beginning of this season, the school was faced with a challenging task of working out if the NSWFA multi-week program was something our school would participate in. With extensive consultation and reflection on what we want our SBHS Fencing program to be, I decided as MIC (with full support from the school) that we would not be participating in the NSWFA multi-week program for this season as it did not meet our needs. As a consequence, I have been working hard to provide an alternative inter-school activity for our students by working directly with other schools to establish a NSW Schools’ Fencing League, which fulfils our inter-school competition obligations and meets the schools’ needs.

Students were advised as such and were told that if they chose to enter the NSWFA multi-week events on their own accord, they do so without official school support. As it currently stands, the school does not recognise the multi-week NSWFA program as a school endorsed competition for this season. I am keeping the dialogue open with NSWFA upon the conclusion of the season and will review our options for next year.

For any fencing competition/activity to be officially endorsed and supported by the school, the school will provide financial and coaching support by paying the entry fees and have staff on site to supervise and coach our students. As such, teams and individuals who wish to represent our school are required to be vetted through our selection process. The selection policy for school representation must be fair and transparent across all sports. In the SBHS Fencing program, we select our teams based firstly on focus and dedication in training, followed by determining ranks through internal competition and assessment by our coaches so that we select our representatives based on merit.

Thinking about future seasons, It would be detrimental for the program, school and students’ morale and integrity if we allowed teams to be entered based on a process of whoever chooses to enter and can afford to pay their way on to a team. To maintain the integrity of the fencing program and my role as MIC, I will uphold the selection policy that requires the school to endorse students representing the name of Sydney Boys High through a selection process based on merit.

I have done my best to factor in the conflicting scheduling with the new NSW Schools’ Fencing League program and aimed to minimise disruption to students who wished to be involved in both programs. I have advised all students who have entered the NSWFA multi-week events to do so as independent fencers or representatives of a club/private team so as to make that distinction of responsibility clear.

As such, I will be asking NSWFA and the relevant teams to change the team name/representation to something else other than ‘SBHS Team’. This should be theoretically possible as the NSWFA program is not recognised as an official inter-school competition – they are a ‘school-age’ competition. Regardless if the name change request is successful, the school will maintain its distance from the NSWFA multi-week program this season and will not endorse the use of our school name or take credit for the results.

I know this decision will affect some a lot more than others and I want you all to know that it was not an easy one for me to make. At the core of my role, I aim to be fair and transparent in all of my tasks. I have the responsibility to lead the program in a clear direction that will benefit the many over the few and uphold the integrity of the school’s High Spirit and sportsmanship.

To support this position, I have released the official SBHS Fencing Team Selection Policy, which can be found on the SBHS Fencing Program page.

Please let me know if there are any issues or questions.

– Dat Huynh

MIC Fencing

Hi all,

We will be hosting a friendly Fencing Exchange with St Ignatius’ College Riverview this weekend.

Any fencers who are available for around 20 minutes at the end of school (3:15pm) on Friday, please assist with packing away tables and chairs to clear the Great Hall for the Exchange on Saturday.

Fencers participating in the exchange, please arrive no later than 7:30am to help set up the Great Hall with the electric pistes. Activities start at 8:00am and the roll will be marked. The event is planned to run until 12pm. Please don’t be late!

The Parent Fencing Committee will be organising morning tea for our students and guests. They have asked me to remind all participating students from both schools to bring along $2 to help share the cost of catering.

SBHS Fencers are asked to stay back for around 20 minutes at the conclusion of the Exchange to help pack away gear and set up the Great Hall with tables and chairs for exams next week.

Please let me know if there are any issues or questions.

I look forward to a fun event with you all.

Cheers,

Mr Huynh

It was a great turn out from our boys at the second foil fencing exchange of the season. Barker hosted SBHS at their venue in Hornsby and all students had a good opportunity to fence and build relationships with our host school.

Thank you to our generous host for providing morning tea and running a successful fencing exchange!

SBHS hosted Knox and St Aloysius hosted Barker on the weekend for the first round of friendly fencing exchanges. Our students had a productive day fencing and building relationships with our guest schools. A special thank you to the parents for your support and organising the morning tea break for our boys!