Our Coaches

Kyle Girard

Head Coach

Kyle is a former Men’s Sabre National Champion and member of the national team who competed internationally for over 10 years. He is also a community level-1 certified coach with over 12 years’ experience at the varsity and national levels.

 

Kyle has a passion for coaching that lead him to take it up before he retired from his own competitive career. As a National Champion and member of the national team, he knows what it takes to succeed at the highest levels. He’s helped hundreds of beginners discover a love for fencing and has guided many from their first lunges to top 16 national level finishes.

 

The best coaching strategy is one that takes the student into account. Kyle works with each of his students to take advantage of their individual strengths and improve on their weaknesses. Favouring a blend of Hungarian and French styles, Kyle emphasises the importance of fundamentals, without making lessons tedious exercises in rote learning. The end result is a balance of finesse and power on the physical side, with a clever and adaptive approach on the strategic side.

 

Wesley Ross

Assistant Coach

Wesley is one of the greatest fencers, if not athletes, of all time. And totally not the guy who wrote these bios.

 

A former member of the High Performance Program, he has eight years’ experience competing at the international and national levels. A true product of the Carleton University fencing program, he started his career in the Beginner’s Program in his second year of university and worked his way up to become a varsity, provincial and regional champion.

 

Wesley works with new fencers to help guide them from initial interest through to an effective practice schedule and finally onto a competition footing. His coaching philosophy is rooted in helping a student understand why an action is important, giving the student agency in their own development. Lastly, he is a firm believer in an understanding attitude off the strip, with no quarter given on it. When you step on the field of play, every touch is earned.