Let me begin by once again expressing my gratitude.
That gratitude begins with our members who voted to elect me as an At-Large Director in September of 2023.
And after a year of serving on the Board, that gratitude extends to my colleagues who voted to elect me as the 4th Chair/President of the Board.
I cannot think of a greater honor in my entire lifetime in the sport, and I will never take for granted the faith placed in me by both the community and my colleagues on the Board. Above all else, I’m excited to give back to this sport and have the privilege to serve our athletes, our coaches, our parents, referees, and armorers (and our amazing committees/volunteers).
I never got to have the career I wanted on the strip, and so this opportunity will allow me to perhaps “create a legacy, not a moment” as Miles Chamley-Watson would say.
With the new responsibilities and expectations associated with me being Chair, there will be a necessary shift in my communication. In summary, Lehfeldt’s Boring Board Blog is going to be put on indefinite hiatus. Let me explain why.
As Chair, two things are true:
- The Chair is still a voting At-Large Director
- The Chair is also the “captain” of the Board (or Air Traffic Controller, as David Arias would say)
Lehfeldt’s Boring Board Blog provided an effective communications vehicle as an individual At-Large Director to discuss my own positions, signal voting intent, and fulfill my promise made in December 2022 of making “…a blog post justifying every single vote I make and the rationale behind doing so.”
The circumstances have shifted since I wrote that, and as Chair, it’s more important to communicate the collective decisions made by our Board than to speak up as one individual. In my very first Boring Board Blog entry, I wrote that “…once a decision is made by the Board, that decision becomes owned by the collective Board, even if I vote against it.” That principle becomes even more pronounced as my responsibilities shift from communicating my own positions to communicating the positions of the entire governance wing of USA Fencing.
Communication and transparency remain extremely important. And while I remain proud of the decisions made by my colleagues in the past year, the Board certainly recognizes the need for ongoing trust-building and communication with the USA Fencing community. So, the good news here, is that Phil has agreed to give me space on the USA Fencing website moving forward to communicate the decisions of the Board, which is essentially what Lehfeldt’s Boring Board Blog will evolve into. If he can write “5 Minutes with Phil,” then I guess I can have a “Lunchtime with Lehfeldt,” “Dinner with Damien,” or “The Governance Chicken Tendie Extravaganza” (we’ll work on branding).
There’s one more component to this that I need to discuss with my readers in candor, and that is regarding “The Fencing Coach” as a platform and how it will be used (and not) moving forward. TFC has been both a blessing and a curse in my life. It’s a blessing, because as I’ve watched my readership grow over the years, I’ve been grateful that I’ve been able to be myself, speak out against injustices in the sport, rattle trees, ruffle feathers, and use my platform to help facilitate needed changes in the sport (with some good-natured s***posts mixed in). It’s a curse, because sometimes this kind of ad-hoc posting can become a reflection of the Board itself (whether that’s fair or not). “The Fencing Coach” in its current unfiltered and off the cuff form simply isn’t compatible with my new goal of leading USA Fencing as Chair. Plain and simple.
My focus of “The Fencing Coach” is going to be exclusively on Epee, and taking years of research I had in my national team role and rolling it out to the public. I’m hoping that will provide resources to change the way we think about Epee, since we’ve now gone [checks clock] more than 100 years without an individual Olympic medal in Epee.
What remains is that I’m still very much the same person you’ve hopefully gotten to know both online and in person over the 30+ years I’ve been in this sport. I’m the same person who believes in doing what’s best for our members. I’m the same person who values communication and transparency. I’m the same person who has always been accessible to our community (aka my second family). And perhaps, most importantly, I’m the same person that was a victim of childhood sexual violence, who will fight to remove this poison from our sport, and to promote a Fencing community that favors equity (in every sense of the word) and promotes psychological safety among all of our participants.
Moving forward, The Fencing Coach is a blog and Damien Lehfeldt is Chairman of the Board. I will always think back to the exchange from Ghostbusters between Spangler and Venkman:
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don’t cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
…You get my point.
Thank you all, once again for your faith in me. I am looking forward to working with my colleagues, Phil Andrews our CEO, our incredible committee volunteers, and the fencing community as a whole to advance this sport to new and amazing heights. I’m always a phone call, email, or text away. Peace, love, and chicken tendies.
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