Clink! Clank! “Pierce, don’t slash!”

Three nights a week, a room in the Student Recreation Center is filled with the sounds of clashing steel and good-natured instruction.

-Welcome to the NIU Fencing Club, where the members pretend to kill each other for fun.

Kristin McCullough, a sophomore mathematics education major, said the fencing club is the best thing she’s done at NIU.

“It’s nice for beginners, because even they can score points against advanced fencers,” she said.

Fencing is a sport that has existed in its modern form for about 500 years. It requires heavy white shirts, metal headgear, gloves and long flexible swords of three kinds: foils, epees and sabres.

Dom Pelletier, a postgraduate and the club’s treasurer, said fencing cannot only tone muscles, but also can boost one’s confidence.

“We get a lot of geeky guys. It’s good for them, but they tend to scare the girls off,” he said jokingly.

Not all the female fencers get scared off, though about five attended Monday’s fencing class.