Olympic Funds to Launch Fencing Programs in L.A., County Schools

High school fencing is not going to replace football and basketball, but surplus funds from the 1984 Olympics may help the sport get a toehold in high schools in the city and county of Los Angeles.

The Salle Gascon Fencing Club, located at the Westside Fencing Center in Culver City, has received a $20,000 grant from the Los Angeles Organizing Committee Amateur Athletic Foundation to create high school fencing programs, said club officials.

Theodore Katzoff, master-at-arms for the club, said demonstrations will be given at schools this spring, instructors will be trained to teach beginning foil classes and basic equipment will be provided instructors and students at schools selected for the program.

Katzoff said questionnaires have been sent to high schools, five of which will be selected for the program in the next couple of weeks. He said the schools chosen will come from “ethnically mixed school districts where enrichment programs are not the usual thing.”

Two instructor candidates from each of the five schools will take “an intensive course this summer in the methodology of teaching the basics,” Katzoff said. He said that other interested schools could send an instructor or instructors to the summer program but their training would not be funded from the grant. The training will be directed by Katzoff at the center, 8735 Washington Blvd.

Katzoff said the center’s grant was part of $1 million awarded by the foundation to 17 applicants and that the sports considered were “specifically individual sports, equally accessible to boys and girls and to minorities.”

“The possibilities are very exciting,” he said. “The involvement of youngsters on a high-school level could lead to an interscholastic fencing league similar to that in San Francisco.

“It will give the students an edge in NCAA and U.S. Fencing Assn. competitions as well as (provide) an enrichment that previously has been available to very few.”

Names in the News

Edwin Richards, who was U.S. fencing champion in the foil in 1962 and 1963 and was on the 1964 U.S. Olympic team, has joined the staff of the Westside Fencing Center in Culver City. Richards, who placed 12th in the saber in the 1962 world championships and 14th in foil in the 1958 world finals, served most recently as master of arms at the Air Force Academy. Among his other posts, he was fencing instructor at Boston University and has coached national and international teams.

Holes in one were scored recently at the Rancho Park Golf Course nine-hole layout by West Los Angeles residents Larry Fadem, Samuel Goodman, Joe Biederman, Michael Glynn, Harry Goodman, Mario J. Bisutti and Harry Kert.

Chris Prato shot a gross score of 35 to win the A flight at the January tournament of the Penmar Men’s Golf Club. Other winners, scores and flights: Leon Gross, 38, B; George Pegg, 40, C, and Marc Cummins, 39, temporary handicaps.