Sometimes in youth fencing, fencers make huge improvements, going from getting cut during pools to medalling at NACs, or from an E rating to an A rating. However, when do most of these breakthroughs happen? I have heard some coaches say that it can happen between Y12 and Y14 when fencers get puberty, but things are locked in after Cadet. But is this really true? Let’s look at the data.
Methodology
I tracked the seeding of fencers born in 2004 and 2005 at their national championships in their age groups from 2017 to 2020. I took all of the fencers that attended each championship, and ranked them based on their seeding with respect to each other. Then I analyzed the correlation between their respective seedings for consecutive years.
Results
A correlation describes how close a scatterplot is to being a perfect line. If the correlation coefficient were 1, for example, that would mean the #1fencer was #1 the next year, the #2 fencer was #2 the next year, etc, so everyone has the same amount of skill with respect to their peers. A correlation of 0 would mean that people’s skill level with respect to their peers is completely random.
Therefore, if two years have a correlation of 1, that means that nobody made a breakthrough; lower correlations mean that more fencers experienced a breakthrough.
Based on the data in the graph, for all weapons and genders besides saber, the fewest fencers have a breakthrough between their first and second years of Y14. For the most part, the optimal time to experience a breakthrough is between the 1st and 2nd year of Y12. However, if a fencer misses that window, it’s not too late for them; there’s plenty of opportunity between the 2nd year of Y14 and the 1st year of Cadet to get a lot better than their peers. It’s never too late to get better!
View the full data here
