While riding on a Boston subway recently, a woman suddenly yelled, "Stop! Somebody snatched my purse!" Before the would-be thief could flee, she instinctively tripped him with her cane. When he fell, she pinned its tip to, his chest and demanded, “Don’t you move!" The thief, a young boy, squirmed with discomfort, and then threw the purse at her feet. “What’s that?” the woman snapped. He squeaked, “Your purse! Can I go now?." She released him, and the boy fled.

This true story is remarkable not only for the fact that the hoodlum became the victim, but because the woman who foiled him is blind. She was able to detain her mugger because of the training she received from Eric T. Sollée, her fencing instructor at the Carroll Center for the Blind in Newton, Massachusetts.

Fencing is a sport which requires dexterity, mobility and balance. One might assume that a basic prerequisite for a fencer would be sight. This is not necessarily so.

The Carroll Center was the first civilian center to develop rehabilitation programs for people who become blind, as opposed to those who are born blind. Before a client enrolls in a training program, he or she undergoes extensive eva|uative tests. If the tests show that the client has the physical capabilities for fencing—balance, stamina and pacing—then he or she is encouraged to study it as an important part of his rehabilitation program.

Sollée has two classes of fencing students at the Carroll Center—beginning and advanced. His students have ranged in age from 18 to 70, and have been equally divided between men and women. Currently, he has seven students, and meets with them for two-hour lessons twice a week. Each student is expected to practice two hours per week outside of class. Since the average length of a client's stay at the Carroll Center is four to five months, the lessons generally last three or four months.

In the beginner's class, the students do not fence with one another. Instead, they are taught the basic positions and movements; with emphasis placed on orientation and balance. Sollée teaches them to go forward in a manner that is “aggressively cautious.” When taught to advance and retreat, the students learn to pay special attention to what their body is telling them—are they off-balance, are they tilting their foil, are they sliding their feet? Beginners spend most of their time learning and practicing parries, ripostes and lunges.

To enter the advanced class, a student must first show that he is capable of navigating a maze-like route from his residential building to the fencing class, without assistance. Thus, advanced fencing becomes its own reward. As his students become better fencers, Sollée says they often dare him: “Hey, coach, I wanna score some touches on you!" Sollée is only too willing to accept their challenges.

Eric Sollée and his students have accepted a challenge. They are practicing their avocation against mighty odds. The benefit of sight for one player in a fencing bout gives that player an almost insurmountable advantage. And yet, in their biannual matches against So|lée's fencing team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, his blind students have won an average of 50% of their bouts against blindfolded opponents.

Mr. Sollée has taught fencing to the blind for almost ten years. The founder of the Center, Father Thomas Carroll, believed that there might be a relationship between a blind person's need to develop mobility skills, and the mobility requirements of fencing. He asked Sol|ée’s former teacher and fencing master, Larry Dargie, to fence blindfolded, with a blind man. To Dargie's surprise, the blind man won. Dargie discussed this match with Sollée, and his curiosity, provoked by the conversation, prompted Sollée to agree to begin a fencing program at the Carroll Center.

The newly-blinded adult often faces a terrifying, sometimes immobilizing, fear of walking. Furniture, walls and stairs are obstacles as well as guideposts. He believes that every step poises him on the brink of oblivion, and the dread which he feels often causes a blind person to withdraw, to minimize his risks. Fencing demonstrates to the blind person that his remaining senses can lead him to safety and self-assurance.

Fencing provides concentrated physical exercise at high speed, and the precision of timing and movement are invaluable in their application to mobility training. Newly—blinded adults often believe that their athletic lives are over, or severely limited. Fencing provides them with a recreational outlet which disproves this.

Sollée notes the similarities between the goals and techniques of teaching blind people to handle a cane, and his instructions to them for handling their swords. The theories and purposes for each are alike: to “see” what is ahead of them. “Using a foil is similar to using a cane to get around," Sollée says, “only the foil is up and out in space." With a cane, a blind person learns to find the safest, clearest path. “In the same way, in fencing, a blind person learns to recognize that things are safe where they were before, that they won't fall off a cliff.”

The important thing for the fencer to learn is how to visualize what should be happening with his own blade, as well as what is happening with his opponent’s. This he learns by scrutinizing the various clues provided through hearing and touch. Since the students are newly-blinded, and not blind-from-birth, they can imagine what is happening in a situation if it is adequately described to them. This, of course, places greater demands on Sollée to describe precisely each action and position for his players; clear directions are lifelines for the fencers.

Sollée explains the sightless fencers' technique in this way: the blind students can hear and feel motion. He teaches them to feel from the “attitude" of the blade what should be happening. In other words, from the feel of his opponent’s blade against his own, a fencer can visualize where that blade is, and attack or defend accordingly. He teaches the students to play it safe, to retreat and get out of striking range when necessary, until they can analyze their opponent’s weaknesses and develop a strategy to counteract them. Like sighted players, blind players must learn to “think on their feet," and act upon information that their senses absorb. Obviously, the advantage of sight is enormous, but it is not essential, as Sollée and his students are proving.

In addition to the physical advantages offered by fencing, there are numerous psychological ones as well. As Mr. Sollée said, “Life becomes a succession of small frustrations for the blind person. Resentment, anger and disappointment face him at every turn, as he tries to adjust to his life without sight." Almost every task becomes a struggle for the newly-blinded adult. Even something as essential as eating, or as ordinary as walking downstairs pose constant frustration and danger. “How will I get from the car to the door’? How will I know if there's anyone else in the room? How many people are looking at me?" Fencing can help alleviate these worries. When a student is able to score a touch on Sollée (who is usually blindfolded when matched against his students), Sollée grins, “They know they've accomplished something!” Each such victory sends a student's confidence sky-high. Sollée also has a battery-operated practice device which provides immediate gratification: when the fencer scores a touch on the target, it responds with an audible cry of distress: “OUCH!"

Since the clients at the Carroll Center are in residence for only short periods of time, it is not possible to have a regular team. Twice a year, however, Sollée takes his students to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is head fencing coach. He places blindfolds on his sighted students and matches them with his blind students. Since he first tried this in 1976, he has discovered to his amazement and delight", as well as to his credit, that his blind students win an average of 50% of their bouts. A few of his blind students have played sighted students who were not blindfolded. One fencer won 10% of his bouts, another, 25%.

Sollée says that his graduated students often go on to purchase their own equipment and continue to take lessons. After they have left the Carroll Center, many return and practice with So||ée’s new students.

Fencing is not a "natural" sport. The body positions -and the fencing movements are strange enough that fencing is awkward to most novices. In that sense, sighted and blind students start out with the same “handicap." As every student of fencing becomes more adept, the blind fencer needs to make a greater effort and develop different senses in order to become as competent a player as a sighted person. Sollée and his students have proven, however, that they have the ability to be more than competent:-they can be equal, or better. than their sighted counterparts.

Victories in life are rare and fleeting. Blind persons, in the darkness of defeat, can lose the will to conquer life's obstacles. Eric Sol|ée’s fencing classes, however, offer many small triumphs and the sunshine of victory to his blind students.

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Rita Tehan is a freelance feature writer living in Washington, D. C. She has dealt with the emotional and psychological problems of the handicapped as a result of her father's gradual loss of sight due to diabetes. As part of his rehabilitation program, Ms. Tehan’s father was enrolled in Eric Sollee’s fencing class at the Carroll Center for the Blind.

JOURNAL OF REHABILITATlON

JULY/AUGUST/SEPTEMBER, 1980

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