Charles Selberg
Fencing Master at UC Santa Cruz, member of a team that won gold at the World Master’s Championships
Preserving Fencing History
The passion for fencing history you’ll find reflected here on the West Coast Fencing Archive can be traced to the legacy of Charles Selberg.
An exceptional teacher and storyteller, Charlie brought fencing history to life for his students through his vivid tales of great fencers and famous bouts.
His estate, filled with posters, photos, scrapbooks and other fencing memorabilia, became the initial collection for the Archive. Since then, we have incorporated sixty more collections and counting.
The Latest Story
Time Traveling with… Comics!
While I continue with my task at hand, scanning the newly donated Hans Halberstadt scrapbooks, I couldn’t help but take a little time to put together a collection of the comics Hans pasted inside the pages of his information-dense collection of ephemera.
Other Tales from the Archive
1964 Letterman Open Foil
Harold Hayes of The Pacific Fencing Club on Alameda Island, Oakland, CA has been a generous contributor of cool things for the Archive. Among other things, he transferred possession of two long boxes of material he received from Mary “Demi” Huddleson, past editor of...
1979 All Cals
The 1979 All Cals (as in, All of California) took place at the West Field House at the University of California, Santa Cruz. It was a collegiate competition for a conference that was in the process of dwindling as funding for fencing programs across the state were...
The Buchwald Open #1
Alan Buchwald, if memory serves, sponsored The Buchwald Open in honor of his grandfather. While not a fencer, Alan said his grandfather would have appreciated the energy of the fencing
Tomas Orley
Tomas Orley was one of the leaders of the student protests that sparked the Hungarian revolution of 1956 that eventually saw Soviet tanks storm into the country and forcibly return the control of the country to communist hands.
1980 Cabrillo Invitational
In 1980, Len Carnighan, then coach at Cabrillo Community College in Aptos, CA, hosted a tournament seeded with three of the top fencers in the area.
Peter Schifrin 1984 Olympic Team
In 1983, my SJSU teammate (and for a year, my epee coach) was seeking a berth on the US Olympic team. He had a number of strong finishes, but really needed to get some European competitions under his belt
The Last Captain
FEATURE LENGTH FENCING DOCUMENTARY
For fifty years, the Hungarian National Sabre team had two constants: they took home gold in every tournament they entered and they had George Piller.
This is the story of Jekelfalussy (Piller) Gyorgy, the 1932 Olympic Sabre champion who defected to the United States during the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne.
By Doug Nichols and Greg Lynch
Meet the Fencers
Meet the Fencing Masters
Relic Spotlight
Central California Division medal from the mid-1970s.
Film Library
Check out our video library
Vintage Posters
View our collection
Books
By the West Coast Fencing Archive
SHARE YOUR
STORY
Have something to share or add? Our goal is to capture the stories we know are out there. Plus photos, videos, home movies, posters—you name it. All this material helps preserve the stories of West Coast fencing.
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