Guglielmo “Gil” Pezza was born and raised in Milan, Italy, until graduation from high school. He started fencing very young with Maestra Marisa Cerani, continued with Maestro Marcello Lodetti at the CONI center in Milan, and then joined the Sala di Scherma of the Società del Giardino www.societadelgiardino.it/sala-scherma under Maestro Arturo Volpini where the top Italian  épée fencers in the 1970s used to train. He was a member of the Italian junior and senior épée national teams.

From the left: Bellone, Mochi, Pezza Gil, Bertinetti, Pezza John

In 1975 and 1976 he came to visit the US to compete in several tournaments fencing foil and épée, and to take the TOEFL. As a member of the Italian national team and by winning several tournaments he was noticed by college coaches who wanted to recruit him. Wayne State University (WSU) led by the legendary Hungarian Maestro Istvan Danosi offered him an athletic scholarship and he started his undergraduate education in the 1977/78 academic year. In 1979 he finished second after Carlo Songini of Cleveland State University. He became WSU first épéeist ever to win a NCAA Men’s épée individual championship in 1980 and repeated as national champion in 1981. Pezza was also instrumental in WSU winning its second and third NCAA Men’s Fencing Team Championships in 1979 and 1981. After graduating in 1981 with a major in History and Political Science, Pezza returned to WSU to pursue a Master in Sports Administration which he received in 1985.

In 1982-83 Pezza joined WSU coaching staff under Aladar Kogler as an assistant coach and helped guide the Tartars to the 1983 NCAA title. In the early eighties WSU dominated the fencing NCAA championships. In 1982, Maestro Istvan Danosi won the title, his last before retiring. Kogler won the 1983 title before leaving. Pezza, elected head coach when Kogler left won the 1984 and 1985 NCAA national titles, the seventh overall NCAA Men’s Fencing National Championships.

To understand the importance of fencing at WSU in those years one should read this March 1985 article on Sports Illustrated http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1119247/index.htm

As head coach, Pezza lead the women’s team to national NCAA epee championships in 1988 and 1989 and in 1990 the NCAA women’s foil team national title. During his coaching tenure nineteen WSU fencers gained All-America status and three fencers, Ettore Bianchi (ME) in 1984 and 1985, Stephan Chauvel (MF) in 1985, and Yasemin Topcu (WF) in 1989 won individual NCAA titles.

While he was the head coach at WSU Pezza pursued three additional degrees, two of them in fencing. In 1985 he received his Maestro di Scherma diploma from the Accademia Nazionale della Scherma, in Naples, Italy, and the “maître” certificate from the USFA. Pezza attended the Detroit College of Law where he received his J.D. with high honors in 1990, graduating fifth in his class.

In 1990 he was elected President of the United States Fencing Coaches Association (USFCA) until 1994. He was in charge of the training and formation of épée coaches at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Spring, CO, and of the women’s épée national team.

As a lawyer Pezza worked for many years for one of the most prestigious legal firms in Michigan. He became then responsible for international operations of the state of Michigan and currently he is involved in water technologies.

Returning to the world of coaching in 2010 he was appointed by the USFCA to head the section responsible for training and coaching development and he holds seminars for fencing instructors in the state of Michigan.

In 1994 Gil Pezza together with two co-authors published a book on fencing (wrote the part regarding épée)

Q: How did your decision to come to the USA as a freshman in college affect your competitive career as a fencer in the Italian national team?

GP: Coming to the US to study in college made me hang to the wall my competitive dreams.  It would have been a waste of time to compete internationally without the continuity and the quality of the training I had in Italy in those years. When I became head coach at WSU I recruited many fencers from Italy, Germany, France, and Norway. All graduated from college and many continued in master programs at other universities and had brilliant careers afterwards in US, or abroad. Fencing in USA for athletes of a certain level can open new and exciting horizons.

Part of the problem for a college recruiter is that the Maestri in Italy did not make these contacts easy because they did not want to lose promising athletes. The student-athletes I had recruited turned out to be the best recruiters in talking with their friends at competitions or when going home. Most top fencers in Italy don’t want to jeopardize their competitive status and ambitions so I had to look for the good fencers who could not have a guaranteed spot in the national team or for the those who were below them, not an easy mix of abilities to find. But in those days there were no online opportunities to explore which we have nowadays.

Q: What do you think about the level of refereeing in US?

GP: Although I was a member of the Italian national epee team, when I first arrived in US I competed in foil too -since I was a decent foil fencer. For example,  I won the Cherry Blossom in DC, a finalist at the Martini and Rossi in foil in 1979 (3rd in epee in 1978) and won the US Foil Team nationals in 1979 (Pezza/Benko/Simon). But in those days, the president of the jury was the true opponent to beat. The main lacuna was that the referees, at that time in the US, did not look at the fencing action in the context of what your opponent did. They knew the FIE rules thoroughly but not the theory of fencing, especially with respect to counteroffensive actions. So if “A” advanced with a bent arm they would give the touch by default against “A” without asking when “B” had started his fencing action relative to “A”.

Incidentally, very few referees even today call an action incorrectly executed as a “common error” (not to be confused with simultaneous attack). Regardless, this did not prepare well the US foil fencers of those days for international competition and many were  handicapped by the interpretations of the non American referees also because the US referees almost forced them to extend the blade too early in the action, which was a truly suicidal move against the counteroffensive capabilities of modern European foil perfected in the eighties.   

Q: What about coaching in US?

GP: Many fencing instructors here are good technically but they don’t have a knowledge of fencing theory  or of the basic strategy . This limits the fencing actions repertoire and the ability to bring the student to higher levels.

My fundamental dogma which I was teaching to all épée instructors was: épée is a non conventional weapon ergo in épée it is much more difficult to attack. I would then ask them in a Socratic way to think about all this and to explain the strategic consequences of this fact and how to handle this when teaching a student technique and strategy. This is the topic of the following article which was published on the USFCA web site.

The other problem in US fencing is that there are many uncertified teachers of fencings who are self taught and consequently have never had the opportunity to learn or grow in the shadow of a Maestro. Many of them have a literal interpretation of texts. Therefore, starting from a limited experience and exposure to fencing and relying mainly on a fencing treatise or Règlement they lack the connective tissue that keeps and puts it all together. They read that speed is a fundamental element in fencing (together with distance and tempo) and they emphasize speed prematurely. The result is that they develop fencers with the deltoid constantly contracted, without a tactical sense of the distance and with a very limited knowledge of time and fencing time.  For this reason, I wrote this article that calls for a more systematic approach to the teaching of by realigning the fundamental elements of fencing with selected secondary ones,  which help them follow themes and corresponding subthemes during the lesson. 

Era così che lo salutavo alla fine di un allenamento, quando per uscire dalla gloriosa sala di scherma di via Carlo Dottori a Padova mi affacciavo nella palestrina in cui svolgeva il suo lavoro di specialista in ortopedia e riabilitazione.

"Ciao Giovanni!", rispondeva lui, con un sorriso sempre cordiale e una stretta di mano decisa, ma gentile, da vero schermidore, da vero Maestro di scherma.

Figlio del grande Maestro Guido Comini, che fu il mio primo Maestro, il Dottor Giuseppe, detto Pino, più volte membro della nazionale azzurra di sciabola e vincitore della medaglia d'argento a squadre ai mondiali di Roma del 1955, mi ha accompagnato nel mio ritorno alla scherma, dopo un lungo abbandono forzato a causa della mia schiena, ed è stato il primo a concedermi uno spazio per praticare e insegnare la scherma storica.

Ricordo le sue belle e dinamiche lezioni di sciabola e la bellissima impostazione classica che amava dare, senza porsi troppi problemi sulle nuove regole dell'arma bitagliente: "Forza Giovanni, passo-avanti-affondo e sciabolata alla testa, passo-avanti-affondo, passo-avanti-affondo, flèche!" "ma Dottore, la flèche l'hanno proibita!" "Non importa, FLÈCHE!".

L'antica sala di scherma ora non c'è più, anche se la società schermistica padovana AS Comini 1885, fortunantamente, ne sta valorosamente sostenendo la memoria, mentre il Dottore si era ritirato in collina, per godersi un meritato riposo dopo decenni di professione medica e di insegnamento schermistico.

Da tanto tempo non lo vedevo più e sapevo che la sua salute era costellata di alti e bassi, ma l'amico Antonio Zancato mi teneva costantemente informato sulle sue condizioni.

Oggi Antonio mi ha telefonato, annunciandomi, con profonda tristezza, che il Dottore se ne è andato.

Un pezzo fondamentale della mia vita schermistica se ne va con lui.

Nel ricordo dell'antica sala che mi vide bambino imparare da suo padre e da giovane uomo imparare da lui non posso che unirmi al dolore dei sui cari, salutandolo come tanti anni fa.

Arrivederci Dottore!