Welcome to the 2023-24 season at CFC, and I wish all of you good luck in this Olympic Year!

Please take a moment to read these fantastic success stories about our fencers from last season:
Eli Dershwitz (MS) - World Champion ,
Nami Kim (WS) Silver at Summer Nationals,
James Davis (MF),
Roy Graham (MF),
Patrick Liu (MF)

I am sure these stories will provide you with plenty of inspiration to make this upcoming season productive, successful and fun and will help you to reach your potential.

We will begin our practices starting on Tuesday, September 5, 2023 and, initially, we will again be open three times per week.
Tuesdays - 7:30-9:30pm
Thursdays - 7:30-9:30pm
Saturday - 11am-1pm
It may change at any point, as the membership of the club returns to higher levels.

Please note that MIT requires all participants using athletic facilities to be fully vaccinated with boosters.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you all soon.
Jarek Koniusz

is an Associate Professor/Senior Coach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Head Coach of MIT’s Women’s and Men’s Varsity Fencing Teams. With over 30 years of international level competition, as both a coach and an accomplished athlete, Jarek enters his 25th year at the helm of MIT’s men’s and women’s fencing program. A four-time Northeast Fencing Conference Coach of the Year, he has built MIT fencing into a perennial powerhouse, qualifying 44 fencers to the NCAA Championship and guiding the Engineers to 20 New England Championship titles during his tenure. Coached by Ed Korfanty, the U.S. Olympic Team Coach who led Mariel Zagunis to Olympic gold medals in 2004 and 2008, Koniusz competed internationally for Poland’s national team for nearly two decades. He earned two individual medals at the World Championships (bronze in 1981 and silver in 1989) and was a medalist at the World Cups. Koniusz holds a master’s degree from the Academy of Physical Education in Katowice, Poland and has earned the title of fencing master in sabre, epee, and foil. In 2002, he was honored by the Polish Fencing Federation with a Lifetime Achievement Award, given to the fencer who has made a lasting contribution to Polish fencing in its 75-year history. The same year Koniusz was selected by the U.S. Fencing Federation to coach the United States sabre team in the World Cup competition held at Koblenz, Germany. He also assisted with the bronze-medal winning U.S. men’s sabre team at the 2010 Junior World Championship in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Rob Hupp has been fencing for more than 40 years. He began at age 13, training at the RochesterFencers Club. Subsequently, he attended Cornell University, training first under Maitre Raoul Sudreand then intensively with Maitre Jean-Jacques Gillet. Rob acquired an A-rating in epee while still anundergraduate, and took part in both national and international competitions following his graduation.

Geoff Pingree started fencing over 40 years ago as a freshman at MIT. Trained by fencing masters Eric Sollee and John Tsang, he became the IFA epee individual and team champion, an NCAA Division One All-American and earned an ‘A’ rating from the United States Fencing Association. He was a contributor to a book on fencing strategy (Olympic gold medalist, Johan Harmenberg’s Epee 2.5). Geoff is an assistant coach at the fencing program at MIT, an instructor at the Cambridge Fencing Center, and the varsity coach at the International School of Boston. Geoff is a registered architect, with a practice focusing on residential and institutional work. He is also the designer (with coach Jarek Konuisz) of the MIT/CFC fencing room and has taught design studios for students at the Boston Architecture Center, using a fencing facility as the design problem.

A four-time Croatian Men’s National Foil Champion, Jovanovic has also won numerous Croatian National Foil Championships at the U-14, Cadet and Junior levels. He has represented Croatia on the national stage as a member of the national foil team in the junior and senior European and World Championships, as well as the Mediterranean, World University and World Military Games. In 2012 he became the first Croatian fencer in history to qualify for the Olympic games, representing his country in men’s foil in London. At the age of 33, Jovanovic received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Croatian Olympic Committee. A competitor at numerous junior and senior world cups and FIE Grand Prix tournaments, Jovanovic was a gold medalist at the 2010 World Cup in Venezuela, finished fifth at the 2010 European Championships in Sheffield and 9th at the University Games in Izmir. Jovanovic has been coaching for the past 10 years domestically and internationally on all competitive levels and his students have achieved numerous prestigious results

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