Athens Fencing Club, Digi Mart USA News (Athens, Georgia): Inside the mostly abandoned and dimly lit Georgia Square Mall, a storefront stands out with the word “Fencing” brightly emblazoned across its entrance. Students inside spar with one another as their coach, Allen Schneider, looks on.
Schneider serves as the coach, marketer and manager of Athens Fencing Club, which he founded in 2013 at age 22. He began his career coaching the University of Georgia’s fencing club and offering private lessons to students before gradually expanding the sport into the broader Athens community.
Schneider started by visiting local schools and hosting programs such as a summer fencing camp at Athens Academy. As interest grew, he rented space at a shopping center in Oconee County, where increased foot traffic helped bring in more students.
The club eventually outgrew the space, leading Schneider to its current home, an affordable former RadioShack storefront inside the declining Georgia Square Mall.
“The stigma in town is like the mall is dead and there’s nothing there,” Schneider said. “So for us, it is actually kind of tough because it’s like, you know, we keep telling people, we’re at the mall and people think, isn’t the mall closed?
I’m like, no, it’s still open.”
Despite an ever-changing Athens landscape, Schneider said both the Athens Fencing Club and the sport itself are continuing to grow. He attributes that growth to fencing’s increasing presence on social media and in popular culture, including its appearance in the Netflix series “Wednesday,” as well as parents who see fencing as a potential pathway to college.
“And obviously, like the big NCAA part, when people realize, like, OK, if I don’t have luck with soccer, basketball, baseball or football, I mean, what’s the next thing?” Schneider said. “They’ll look at things like, oh, maybe fencing is that sport I can use to get into college.”
Schneider noted two former students, Kavya Menke, an Athens Academy graduate, and Cassandra He, a North Oconee High School graduate, who went on to attend Duke University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, respectively, through fencing. He also highlighted one of his standout students, Beckham Burgess, an 11th-grader at Athens Academy, who was selected to the 2025-26 USA Fencing High School All-American First Team.
Schneider said Burgess is also looking to use fencing as part of his path to college.
For other students like Andrew Heaton, 52, a long-time Athens resident, and Jack Krieger, 21, who is taking a gap year from UGA, Athens Fencing Club has become more than a place to practice but also a community for them.
“I’ve seen like a bunch of different clubs around the area, but this one here is a little more personal because at other clubs it can sometimes feel a little just like factory work at times,” Krieger said. “But here it’s a little more homey.
I made a lot of friends here. And you’ve got a pretty tight knit group here.”
As Athens Fencing Club continues to grow, Schneider hopes to continue introducing Athens to the sport while maintaining the close-knit community that makes the club feel like home.
