The action is intense on the sixth floor of 295 Front Street in Brooklyn, at the Brooklyn Bridge Fencing Club.

“Keep moving, Eva, be brave,” head coach and owner of the club Dan Kellner said to 9-year-old Eva Shang of Manhattan, who is training with 12-year-old Genevieve Murphy of Brooklyn.

What You Need To Know

Brooklyn Bridge Fencing Club has been around since 2010

The club recently moved into a new facility in DUMBO, Brooklyn

It is owned by former U.S. Olympian and Olympic Team Coach Dan Kellner 

Kellner is a former U.S. Olympian and Olympic team coach for the U.S. and Great Britain, and is also a U.S. Fencing Hall of Famer. He started the club in 2010.

Fencing is not quite a sword fight from “Game of Thrones” or a lightsaber battle out of “Star Wars,” Kellner says it’s a tactical game of cat and mouse.

“There’s some rules you have to follow, so it’s much more fun and easier to think about it as a game of tag with metal sticks,” Kellner said. 

The club recently moved into a new, expansive space in DUMBO, a few blocks from its former location.

It has nice views of Manhattan and Brooklyn, but more importantly, there are 20 “strips” for fencing bouts, with the athletes wearing masks for safety and attached to an electronic scoring system.

A grey vest called the lamé, worn by each athlete, is the key to whether there is valid or invalid contact during a bout.

“It’s all through the wiring system. There’s a button on the foil and the wire goes down the foil. It’s connected to a socket, goes down a fencer’s arm and down their back,” Kellner said.

When he was a member of the U.S. Olympic Team in 2004, he led the squad to a fourth-place finish, the highest in 56 years. His students have also won numerous national and international medals, including a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics and a silver medal at the 2019 World Championships.

Students at Brooklyn Bridge Fencing Club range in age from five to 18 and love the sport for a variety of reasons. Isla Stewart is 15-years-old and has been fencing for three years. Her mother, aunts and uncles fenced in college. 

“It’s separated from all the other sports, which is nice, and when people see you do it, they are like, whoa,” Stewart said.

Nael Guilloteau, 8, has already been at it for a year and four months, and first started getting into fencing after seeing it at the Olympics.

“I like how it’s a real challenge. It’s not easy,” Guilloteau said.

It’s a sport that Kellner says is safe and gets kids recruited to colleges, among other positives. 

“It’s so good at self-reliance, confidence, problem-solving and creativity,” Kellner said.

For more on the club, head here.