As part of King County’s Modified Phase 1 status under Washington’s “Safe Start” plan, we are preparing to reopen RCFC for some activities. As soon as we have all the necessary safety measures in place, we will resume private lessons and limited retail sales by appointment.

We have updated our list of COVID-19 mitigation measures on our website. Many of these requirements come from the Washington State Health Department; others are additional measures we are taking to reduce risk of transmission. One state requirement is that all students will need to sign a COVID-19 waiver form acknowledging the risk and agreeing to abide by all of our safety policies. This waiver will be provided through our membership system and can be signed online.

One measure we are taking is to space out the private lesson schedule. While the average lesson remains approximately 20 minutes, we will schedule lessons with each coach to start every 30 minutes. The additional break time between lessons will allow for hand washing, review of COVID safety measures, and will allow fencers to enter and leave the club without as much cross traffic. This additional time does mean that our previous lesson schedules will need to be adjusted.

If you have taken private lessons before, please let us know via email (for each student) your preferred day, time range, and coach for a recurring lesson. Please indicate your first choice as well as one or two other options. We will attempt to accommodate everyone’s first choices as much as possible. Note that other days and times besides our previous schedule may now be available, including mornings, early afternoons (before 3:00) and weekends. If you would like to try an alternative time, let us know.

If you have not taken private lessons before but are interested in trying them instead of group classes, let us know the student’s name and preferred days and times, and preferred coach if you have one. We will try to accommodate everyone’s wishes and match up students to coaches appropriately. Check out the Private Lessons page on our website for more details about lessons.

We hope to start up private lessons as soon as the end of this coming week. As we understand different people have different levels of risk tolerance, if you would like to wait a while before resuming lessons, please let us know your estimated start date as well.

At this point we are not allowed to provide any activities other than one-on-one instruction. Groups of 5 fencers or fewer will be permitted once King County reaches Phase 2. We will update you via email and our website when we are ready to provide group activities.

As always, feel free to contact us via email if you have any questions or comments. We’re looking forward to getting back to fencing!

Greg Jones
Rain City Fencing Center