Journelism

Surviving a Combative Culture: Carla-Mae Richards and the Beginning of the United States Fencing Association

Carla-Mae has observed more than half a century of sport fencing. Her drive to succeed and knack for administration landed her the job as the United States Fencing Association’s first executive director in the early 1980s. She has since watched the organization blossom into a serious competitor in the international arena. To accomplish this, Carla-Mae had to lead the splintered American fencing community into completely uncharted territory, all while battling rampant sexism, conniving adversaries and her own fears of incompetence.

Carla-Mae started fencing as a senior in high school more than 50 years ago. She had taken ballet lessons at first, but found them to be too stifling for her adventurous nature. Fencing provided the outlet she needed for energetic motion and cunning strategy. “I loved to outfox my opponents.”

A few years later, Carla-Mae began to realize that her skill set was better suited to running the organizational aspects of fencing than competing in it. “I saw that my athletic ability would only take me to a certain point; I was never going to compete internationally. I realized I was more talented in writing and coordinating. So I traded the sword for the pen, as the pen is mightier than the sword.”

After several years of organizing tournaments, Carla-Mae was invited to bring her administrative prowess to the national governing body of American fencing. She was given the new position of Executive Director in the just-reorganized United States Fencing Association. The organization had previously been called the Amateur Fencing League of America; all the previous work in coordinating the sport was done by volunteers. Now the consensus was that American fencing needed to adopt a more professional air, with full-time paid staff and Carla-Mae at the helm.

There were several problems in the beginning. No one knew exactly what the new Executive Director’s role was meant to entail. People who had volunteered countless hours for the AFLA now felt that their privileged positions were in danger of being replaced by professionals. Perhaps most significant for Carla-Mae was the general ethos of the fencing community during the early 1980s: “Whatever a woman could do, a man could do infinitely better.”

In order to combat these problems and presuppositions, Carla-Mae was forced to go on the offensive. “I had to be ornery and strong to get people to pay attention to me. I was working in an all-male world and fencing was a pretty chauvinistic endeavor back then. When I started fencing, women were only allowed to fence to four points because we were so ‘delicate.’ When I took the executive director position, people were afraid that I wasn’t going to do well. I had to reassure them (and myself) by being forthright about what I was doing.”

Through interactions with her coworkers, Carla-Mae began to realize that there was an overarching theme in the way these people communicated their intentions and ideas. “We’re all fencers at heart, so we are always looking for tactical advantages with other people. We are fencing whether on the strip or off. If you can accept this concept you will do okay. People aren’t necessarily poking at you; they are just trying to see your weaknesses so they can feint or counter attack.”

Due to the hard work of volunteers professionally headed by Carla-Mae, the organization was able to make significant changes. Prior to the advent of the USFA, many of the sport’s referees had their own criteria for how to determine points or penalties; Carla-Mae oversaw workshops for the officials to make sure they all judged evenly. When she started, the general culture of the organization had been schismatically split down the center of the country with both coasts distrusting the other. Carla-Mae worked to unify the groups and develop a circuit of competitions that would give most USFA members the chance to compete close to home. The organization’s membership more than tripled in size during her time as Executive Director, from 6,500 when she began to more than 20,000 when she left.

Of all the things she has done, Carla-Mae is most gratified with the USFA’s accomplishments abroad. “Everything we did was for the athletes, to give them what they needed to perform at their very best. It was very exciting to watch Mariel Zagunis win gold at the Olympics in Athens. Watching Iris Zimmerman win the Cadet World Championships felt like the culmination of all our hard work and effort. The system we had built was working and we were finally getting the results we had been dreaming for.”

Carla-Mae retired from administrative work in 2004 and now coaches part time at Salle D’Armes Richards Fencing Club in Marietta, Georgia.