The 2 high schools I was most familiar with (Mine when I was younger; and my Kids most recently) didn't have fencing. The recent high school; the ones my kids went to, barely had enough students for anything. Plus, the nearest school for competition was 50 miles away, with the 2nd closest school 170 miles away. Plus, they even changed the soccer season until spring so football and soccer didn't compete for players. Then again, football players in their senior year, usually played Iron Man Football. (Played offense AND defense). When you want to play the best, it's hard in a low populated area. Iron man isn't because they were SUPER players; although there were some great all state and nationally recognized players. Iron man was because the talent pool wasn't very large. My son played 4 positions on the football team. I remember one game where 8 of the seniors; out of a 48 minute game; had an average of 3:40 seconds not on the field playing. My high school was real simple. Inner city New Jersey and New York City. We tried to keep knives, guns, chains, and other weapons out of the school. Yea,,,, we're gonna give these kids a sword (Foil). LOL!!! Oh yea, forgot to mention that there was no real correlation in my kid's high school between athletics and academics. Of the 17 IB students in the senior class, 12 of them played one or more sports. 2 of them were recruited athletes to college. Of the rest of the athletes, many took one or more AP class. Yes, we did have some stereotypical "Jocks", but the majority of jocks were your normal "B" student or above. However; of the TOP 5 ranked students in the senior class; the TOP 2 (Tied for #1) were a track and field athlete and a football player. The other 3 in the top 5 ranked also played Soccer and/or swimming. I'm really glad this subject sort of come up, because there's a lot of people with the beliefs of the typical athlete stereotype. Luckily, we are talking about the air force academy where a top 10 university in the country DEMANDS that their applicants/cadets be involved in athletics. Before and during the academy. So it helps promote that athletes can have a brain.