Inside the Los Angeles International Fencing Center, a masked contender hops forward, quickly lunges with foil in hand, misses his target and then skips back. His opponent paws the ground with one foot, then suddenly prances toward the other, whips his arm out and manages to place the tip of his foil onto his target’s metallic shirt.
Ding. The buzzer declares a point.
This flirtatious encounter with jig-like tendencies continues for the next half-hour. Foils clang, shoes stomp on the ground and no words are spoken.
Finally, the dance ends and 17-year-old Mike Stuppler peels his mask off. As if to prove to nonbelievers that fencing is a real, physical sport, his face is doused with sweat and he is out of breath.
Apparently, Stuppler has just gotten certifiably whupped.
"I go all out, and I know he tries on a couple points, but mostly he’s here for me," he says about the victor.
"I get a lot of competition with him that I don’t get from anybody else because he’s a world-class fencer, and there’s very few in this area. So it’s really great when I get to fence him."
This club is run by Olympic fencing coaches and attracts men and women of all ages, but Stuppler is talking about Isaac Kim. A 16-year-old fencer who stands 5 feet 6 inches and just recently started driving to practice on his own.
Isaac has broken into a sweat, too.
Just barely.
***
"Taiwan, Finland, Spain, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Germany, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, France." Isaac has just listed all the countries of the flags that line the gym. But he’s no geography buff.
"I need to know who I’m fencing," he says, shrugging.
The Westlake Village, Calif., native has met the masks of pretty much all the countries represented in the room, although the flag in the middle, the South Korean one, hangs on the wall mostly so that his father can point to it proudly.
It is the international tournaments that have taken Isaac to the capitals of far-off nations, where he has faced off against those who represent the best of the best — at least those in the under-20 category, of course. The kid is still in high school. After spending a day matching swords with those who are usually taller than him, he will head back to suburbia to buckle down on things like chemistry and philosophy, stuff he has to learn because life isn’t just about traveling to Como, Italy, by yourself and competing in the Junior World Cup.
Besides, Isaac didn’t get into fencing for the travel, and his knowledge of the countries he has been to is superficial. Sometimes he doesn’t see much more than the inside of a gymnasium.
Going to far-flung locales is cool to his friends and classmates, but Isaac got into this for the competition. That’s what intrigued him from the beginning — the idea of taking on one person and attempting to defeat him with brawn and brain. Because, as Isaac makes sure to impress, fencing takes strategy.
