Jacob K. Lehman

20 years ago, as a freshman at Cornell, I started a chapter of the stage combat group I’d trained with back in high school. This April, alumni from several generations of the group gathered for a reunion, and got to cross blades with each other as well as some of the current club members. We’ve had our ups and downs in membership, but have celebrated 4 weddings between members, the births of several children, and no divorces (fingers crossed!).

While these lessons may not be generalizable to every organization, I believe there are a few elements that have contributed to our outlasting numerous other clubs, despite having almost no one who comes to college with experience in the discipline (unlike, say, an a capella group, where lots of people might arrive with some singing experience) requiring us to continually train up the next generation of leaders from scratch.

1. Meet people where they are. We have tried to be welcoming to throughout our organization. Have a black belt in a martial art? Great! That will translate to good bodily awareness, even while you learn new aim points to keep your partner safe, rather than inflicting maximum harm upon them. No movement training? Great! You have fewer old habits to unlearn. Want to perform in front of an audience of hundreds? Great! We may need people to perform for the “Johnson Follies” at the end of the year, or a dining hall’s “Game of Thrones” night. No interest in performance, but curious about historical martial arts? Great! We benefit from having a range of training partners, and are continuously trying to learn new styles/incorporate new elements to our discipline.
   
   So long as you’re willing to try, to learn, and to prioritize your partners’ safety, there’s potentially a place for you. We try to offer the opportunity to train as much or as little as someone might want, in the way that they might want, consistently with safety. People may change their mind about what exactly they’re looking for, and they all have something to offer. Even those who initially show zero aptitude for the art form present a growth opportunity for teachers. And for some, the light bulb goes on late, but then burns brightly.
   
2. Know what you are, and what you’re not. At the same time as trying to cast a wide net, if someone really just wants to spar/whack people, that’s not what we do. The non-competitive aspect is, I believe, integral to our longevity as a group. Performers are at their best when they are perfectly in sync to tell the most thrilling story possible. Someone who solely wants to individually be the best and beat out others won’t be happy and will be corrosive to the group’s morale. Most of our members aren’t trying to be professional actors, either. We want to train well and adhere to the highest possible safety standards, but we also want members to be competent and empowered to perform within a few months of joining- if we expected 200 hours of training before putting them on-stage, most would leave before ever getting the chance. There’s a balancing act for a University group between having high standards and accepting that these people will move on in a few years at graduation. We’re really just giving them a taste.  
   
3. Recognize the whole person. I’ve had the good fortune to train with quite a number of excellent martial artists in my life. At the same time, many schools display a form of single-mindedness, where they express the expectation that their art is (or should be) someone’s top priority in life. I can understand the seduction of this mindset; I’ve seen countless MBAs approach wealth accumulation or professional advancement with the same fervor, and while it simplifies the decision-making process, I believe it diminishes us to do so. I’ve never earned more than ~5% of my income from fight choreography, and I know that the students who trained with us would go on to pursue other careers, and needed to prioritize their studies in those areas. What we offered was a welcoming opportunity for someone to set those things aside when they wanted to and focus on learning something else enjoyable.  
   
4. Connect the dots. I don’t know everything, but I do know (at least a chunk of) where the group has been before, and can help them understand some of the challenges that previous leaders of the group had, whether logistical or interpersonal. When working with young people discovering themselves and maybe particularly with dramatically inclined people, the latter are not uncommon; we’ve had our share of breakups, of members who’ve needed to take a break from school (and the club), and, well, drama. But the club as a whole has survived, I think in part because of the art’s focus on keeping each other safe as your primary responsibility.
   
5. Don’t take it personally. I started the group, left my potential spot on a varsity collegiate team in order to expand it to three practices/week from two, lugged a bag full of swords by foot up a hill hundreds of times, and continued to come back at least once/year after graduation to help it continue. At the same time, the group has ignored my advice on more times than I can count, whether about how to spend funding they received from the University, where to hold practices to be accessible, or communication styles. It would be easy to get bitter about it, write it off that the young folks won’t listen to reason, or have gone astray. But part of what I gained and learned from the experience of leading the group with no one to guide me came from making my own mistakes, and I try to remember that they need to do the same. The group belongs to the current members, not the past. I am a resource, but the current generation probably knows what will appeal to the next year’s class better than I do- I’m not on Tiktok, and they’re now closer to my child’s age than my own. I’ll share my opinion when asked, and continue to share it as often as I’m asked, even if they don’t take the advice.

We’ve certainly also had our share of good luck- at moments when the group was dwindling, a new cohort joined and kept it going. Some years they’ve done numerous performances across campus and even in the surrounding area, some years it’s mostly been practice, based on members’ preferences and abilities, but there’s been enough continuity that alumni were able to show up for a weekend and work on some fights with students they’ve never met before and who were in diapers when they started their training. And I believe that community has value, above and beyond the techniques themselves.