Editor’s Note: Isla Luciano is a member of the fencing team and a staff reporter for The New Trier News. While her brother Myles Luciano was interviewed in this article, Isla was not involved in the writing, editing or reporting of this article. 

The New Trier High School varsity boys and girls overall team fencing have both gone 12-1 in the 2025-2026 season. In the 2024-2025 season, the boys team went 13-1 and the girls 12-2, placing fourth and third, respectively, in the conference championship. However, this season, the fencers aim to perform better at the conference than they did last year according to head coach Shawn Smith.

“Fencing is designed to be an individual sport, but we play it from the team aspect as well,” Smith said. “Individual milestones were hit last year, but they didn’t do as well on the team aspect as they thought they should. Their individual games from last year are now melding with each other, and it’s transferring to the team as a whole.” 

Women’s foil captain senior Aoife Ryan, (foil is a type of weapon with a small guard that targets an opponent’s torso) lauds the team’s clear improvements from last season.

“At every tournament we usually have people on the podium placing for every single event,” Ryan said. 

In practice, training focuses on improving certain skills based on what they struggled with in their past tournament.

“They all take their results from the weekend and the feedback that we give them, and they all have their personal journals that they write in that’s fencing-specific,” Smith said. “And then they have those things to work on for the week, either with a coach or with a teammate.”

Men’s épée captain senior Myles Luciano, (épée is a type of fencing weapon that has the largest guard and targets an opponent’s entire body) also explained that while the coaches give the team feedback, the captains can give personal advice to the team as well.

“Usually, our coach will tell us what to work on, something that they know in general a team needs to work on,” Luciano said. “If not, it’s usually more personal. So if I see something that someone’s struggling with, I will help them with that specific thing.”

For Luciano, the men’s épée team has been working on taking advantage of openings that their opponent allows them and on counterattacks. 

“We’ve been working on [counterattacks] recently, so being a bit more patient, waiting for the right time, then learning how to examine your opponent [and seeing] how they react,” Luciano said. 

Ryan went on to explain that due to their performance in past tournaments, the team is focusing more in practice on endurance, doing drills such as running around the track and fencing on strip mats to usually five touch bouts (touch bouts are touching an opponent’s value target area.)

With the end of the season on Jan. 31, Ryan is optimistic about the team being able to improve their performance before then. 

“All together, we can bring up our points, and I think we can do really well in the team competition,” Ryan said.