BF celebrates Black History Month with GBR fencer and coach Curtis Miller. We find out how he got involved in coaching, his takeaways from coaching, and his message to the fencing community.
October is Black History Month in the UK, an annual month that celebrates and reflects on Black history, arts and culture, as well as recognising the achievements and roles of Black people in shaping history.
To celebrate Black History Month, throughout October we are asking some of the members of our community to tell us more about themselves and their lives in fencing.
Introduce yourself.
My name is Curtis Miller. I work at Camden Fencing Club and I coach sabre.
How did you get into coaching?
I kind of stopped my competitive fencing career just after Covid, and then I took coaching a bit more seriously. I wanted to give back to the club because I started when I was ten and they gave me a lot in life. When I was younger, growing up was quite difficult in the area that I was in, and fencing gave me a chance to really see the world and travel to different parts that I would never normally go to. It gave me a new type of life, so when I came to the end of my career I wanted to give back to the club and welcome the next generation.
Why do you think coaching is important?
Coaching is important because again, it’s a way of guiding the next generation. To be fair, it’s the same for adults as well, when we coach adults at the club too. It’s a good way to give motivation to fencers, give them a good guide into a real athlete kind of lifestyle and ensure that they learn a lot from it as well.
What do you get out of coaching?
I get a lot of joy, to be fair, because me and my family history, we’re the type of people that love to help others. For me personally, I’m very passionate about sports and I love the tactical side of things. Being able to get into tactics, share the tactics with the fencers – it’s just nice to have that little conversation and to see what it looks like on the piste as well.
What’s your message to the fencing community?
My message is to give it your best. Of course there’s going to be things like nerves and hesitation on certain things, but when it comes to fencing it’s such a great community. Yeah, just push yourself, give yourself 100%, and you never know what could happen at the end of the day.
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