Jess Auffert showed up at the Willard Community Center in Lincoln ready for a workout. She had no expectations other than fun with her friend, Sophie Weinert, who had suggested the day-long class.

How often do you get to learn how to sword fight, Auffert thought. 

But she quickly realized it was more than that. She realized it when one man arrived dressed  head-to-toe as a medieval jester. Others showed up and unzipped large duffel bags, revealing dulled steel training swords, wooden daggers, gloves and helmets.

Auffert and Weinert were the least knowledgeable in the room. They also were in a crowd with twice as many men. It didn’t matter. They were hooked.

“They did a really good job making us feel welcomed, even though we had no idea what we were doing,” Auffert said.

That day in January 2023 marked the first public intensive class held by the Nebraska Swordfighters Guild, a Lincoln-based nonprofit dedicated to researching and practicing historical European martial arts.

It was founded in 2005 but has seen newfound interest in recent years thanks largely to a 12-week, non-credit swordplay course offered through Southeast Community College.

For most of its history, members, almost always men, joined one at a time. Now members are more likely to come in groups. And they’re more likely to be women, and more likely to identify as LGBTQ+.

Those new members — people like Auffert and Weinert — have helped transform the guild into something more than a small group of sword enthusiasts, said Joe Loder, the guild’s head instructor.

“They’ve helped make this a community,” he said.

Growth And Change

In late January, Lincoln’s Air Park Community Center echoed with the sound of squeaking shoes and clashing steel, the sound of 28 people training for upcoming sword fighting tournaments.

They wielded swords and daggers, and wore fencing masks and colorful quilted gambesons — a jacket traditionally worn under armor. Some of the participants traveled from Omaha and as far away as Denver.

The Nebraska guild’s push for growth began in 2017, when it became an official satellite of the Chicago Swordplay Guild. Other affiliates are based in Texas, Colorado and Wisconsin.

Loder, a member of the Chicago guild for five years before he moved to Lincoln, became head instructor for the Nebraska guild in 2017.

They made flyers and put an ad on the radio, trying to drive people toward the guild’s Facebook page and website.

Volunteers — mostly the instructors — held sword-fighting demos at renaissance fairs and other medieval events, at comic cons and Lincoln festivals.

It didn’t take off like they hoped.

That’s when Loder saw the call to teach new continuing education classes through SCC. The guild proposed an introductory course and SCC agreed.

The quarterly eight-person class filled up quickly, most students arriving with as little knowledge as Auffert and Weinert would several years later.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the guild to pause in-person activities, including the SCC course. As guidelines changed, the guild started slowly resuming activities. There was no grappling or daggers, but it was a running joke that longswords are “a really good social distancing tool,” Loder said.

The real shift came once the swordplay class returned to the pages of the SCC Continuing Education catalog. There would be one or two women in a class, then four or five women, nonbinary and transgender participants in a class of eight total.

Some people’s participation ends with the class. Others, like Morgan Otte, become guild members.

“Anybody is welcome in our community because if you think that swords are cool, we want you here if you want to be here,” said Otte, who joined in 2023 just before Auffert and Weinert.

Around that time, the Monday practices would rarely draw 12 people. Now, Loder said it’s not uncommon to have 25 people on the floor, and he believes that number could grow to nearly 50 people next year.

A Community Of Swords

Growing up in David City, Otte was drawn to fantasy literature and television — and the sword fights often featured in both. Becoming a sword fighter herself remained a fantasy, too, after she left in 2009 for college in Lincoln. That was until a 2019 internet search led her to the swordplay class held at SCC.

So when she finally got into the class in 2023, she knew she would like it. What she didn’t expect was how much a part of her life the guild would become.

She credited many of the members there when she started — people like Loder, long-time instructor Daniel Cadenbach and former guild president Bill Murphree — with creating a safe and welcoming environment.

The guild has never had a major accident, according to Loder. Scrapes and bruises are inevitable in the sport, but no bones have been broken, no ambulances called. We don’t want to hurt our friends, Loder says, physically or emotionally.

Auffert and Weinert recalled one time early on when an older member made a comment that made them uncomfortable. They brought it to Loder, who pulled the guy aside and quietly spoke to him. The man later apologized. Nothing similar has happened since.

Loder credited Otte, Auffert and Weinert for helping make the guild more of a community. There was a longstanding tradition to go to a sports bar after Monday practices, but that was the extent of the socializing. The three newer women — who dubbed themselves the Party Planning Committee — began creating opportunities to meet up outside of Monday nights.

They’ve coordinated parties — standard events like barbecues and a watch party for “The Hobbit” movie trilogy, but also events like “fancy party” where you get dressed up just because. There have been cutting parties that center on, well, using a sharp sword to cut through foods like pumpkins and watermelons, and a one-time attempt at stick-pony jousting.

The guild’s online group chat regularly pings with messages, too, as people stay in contact throughout the week.

“Joe (Loder) thinks that the social events that we do has had a big impact on how many people have joined and stayed in the guild consistently, which, I kind of agree. I think that seeing people outside of just the ‘whack’ and ‘bonk’ really humanizes everyone,” Auffert said.

Guild member Evan Gordon phrased it another way: “Come for the swords, stay for the people.”

There is, though, some competition when it comes to swordplay. Guild members can advance to four different levels based on knowledge and skill. Members must take tests to demonstrate their technical and historical knowledge.

Four entry level members recently advanced to the next level, including Otte, who became the first woman in the guild’s history to advance. Their collective achievement was a sign, she said, that moving up is attainable to anybody in the guild.

“We want each other to be better. We are competitive, but it’s not at the cost of the person next to you.”

Several of the newer members have started going to tournaments.

When Auffert attended her first, a March 2024 tournament hosted by the Omaha Kunst des Fechtens guild at the Benson Community Center, she ended up in several fights. Her first opponent could tell she was nervous. He didn’t go easy on her, but he also “didn’t just straight up clobber me, which was nice,” Auffert said.

She left the field shaking when another woman, the girlfriend of another combatant, approached and offered to refill Auffert’s water bottle.

“To me, that kind of shows that it’s not just our guild that is so kind and open,” she said. “It’s like the whole community of swords, just about anyone that we’ve met has been so kind.”

This story was originally published by Flatwater Free Press, an independent, nonprofit newsroom focused on investigations and feature stories in Nebraska that matter. Read the article at: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/come-for-the-swords-stay-for-the-people-h...