Hello – thank you for your interest in UCLA Fencing! We are a student-run club hoping to give Bruins a collegiate fencing experience, whether they've been fencing for years or are complete beginners. We both host and attend tournaments, as well as provide our fencers with equipment. Every level of giving matters to us. Our club costs start out small with $10 mask cords, and range up to our goal of sending our fencers to Collegiate Nationals. Thank you for giving or sharing – fours up from the UCLA Fencing community!

WHO WE ARE

The UCLA Fencing Club has been a part of UCLA for a little over 100 years now, having celebrated its 102th anniversary as of September 2025. As a collegiate club sport, we have won numerous awards throughout the Southern California collegiate division, and have hosted the famous UCLA Okawa Open for many years. We often coordinate tournaments with other collegiate fencing clubs, such as UCSB and UCI, and have even scrimmaged with UCSD’s NCAA team. Additionally, many of our members are accomplished fencers, having won medals in various regional and national competitions. 

Our goal has always been to spread the sport of fencing to the UCLA community and to make fencing more accessible to students and faculty by providing 1-on-1 coaching, group lessons on drills and footwork, and lending any equipment for tournaments and practice. 

WHY WE NEED YOUR HELP

TLDR: We are a student-run club, operating solely off of funds raised from the generous donations of people like you and club dues. Without your support, we lose the capacity to support new and seasoned fencers alike from participating in intercollegiate trainings and tournaments. 

The amount of new and returning members spiked in the last two years, and the number has only continued to grow with around 60 continuous members! We were also very happy to welcome back our coach, Jim Beihold, who joined us in 2023 and has been a wonderful source of advice and support since. However, more members and additional tournaments means that we need more funds to ensure that all of our members are able to train to the fullest extent possible. We currently do not have enough equipment to support everyone, and although we are looking to buy more, fencing equipment is not cheap.

In addition to training and equipment, we seek to provide fencing experiences for ourselves as well as the greater SoCal area. To this end, we are continuing to host the Okawa Open this April, which honors our former head coach Heziburo Okawa, who was with us from 1974-1980. This tournament would not only allow our fencers and fencers at other colleges to come and show off their skills, but it would also be open to the entire LA community. Running a tournament of this size can be quite expensive, from referees to equipment, which is why we need your help to make it happen.

Thanks to your support over the last couple years, we have been able to finally start getting things back to normal post-COVID. Our members are currently hard at work preparing for the IFCSC series as well as Collegiate Nationals coming up in April. We are very excited to host our Intercollegiate Fencing Conference of Southern California (IFCSC) tournament on February 7th, and we are also extremely excited to be hosting the Okawa Open in April! We owe a huge thanks to everyone who has been supporting us because we wouldn't have been able to do it without you.

Our goal this year is $1,500, and by meeting that goal, we will be able to pay for upcoming travel to tournaments, the costs associated with running the Okawa Open and purchasing new equipment for our hard-working fencers. There is a long road ahead of us as we continue to rebuild our club, but with your help, we will be that much closer to giving our members the resources to participate in such an engaging sport. We thank you for your support for the UCLA Fencing Club. Any help will make a lasting impact to the future of our club and community.

CLICK HERE TO READ THE UCLA FOUNDATION'S DISCLOSURE STATEMENTS FOR DONORS

Should this fund reach the campus minimum required for the establishment of an endowment or quasi-endowment, The UCLA Foundation reserves the right to convert this fund to an endowment or quasi-endowment. Please click here to learn more about how the UCLA Foundation invests and manages its endowments.