Bristol Blades Team
The club has a number of coaches and volunteers who all support the club and help us achieve our goals.
Joseph Pearce
Senior Management Team: Club Administrator, Club Treasurer & Lead Junior Foil Coach
Joe is a qualified L3 coach in all three weapons (foil, epee and sabre) and has experience coaching at all levels. Joe has been coaching regularly since he started helping to run the beginner’s programme while he was at Oxford University. Since then Joe has continued to develop his coaching practice regularly having worked with David Kirby for over a year, attending the FIE’s international coaching academy for 3 months in Budapest and regularly attending coaching courses both as a participant and an assistant coach educator. He also regularly attends competitions (domestically and internationally) as a referee. Joe has coached and developed a multitude of successful fencers, having worked with England Senior Commonwealth team members and Veteran Team GB members. Joe has recently taken a role in developing refereeing and coaching across the country and is an accredited coach and referee developer for British Fencing.
Nat Lewis
Senior Management Team: Club Founder & Lead Sabre Coach
Nat is a qualified Level 5 FIE Sabre coach and has been coaching professionally since graduating from University. Nat has been an England u15 sabre coach travelling with the squad to international competitions. Nat also acts as a British national development coach and often works at the Athlete Development Programme camps run by British Fencing. In this role, Nat works with the British U17 and U20 Sabre squads, both at national training days and abroad. Nat has also recently started working for British Fencing as a project officer for para-fencing.
Glen Golding
Senior Management Team: Club Founder & Lead Senior Foil Coach
Glen is a qualified Level 5 FIE Foil coach, has been a British National Development Coach for British U17 and U20 foil squads, and was a finalist for the 2018 British Development Coach of the Year. He has coached national and commonwealth champions as well as members of the 2012 Olympic squad. Glen has coached multiple GB squads including the cadet GB women’s and men’s squads at European and World Championships.
Glen is also currently the assistant coach for the World Class Programme wSith The English Institute of Sport and the GB Wheelchair Fencing Team.
Glen’s fencing career has also shown fantastic results, including national championship titles ranking 17th in the 1996 cadet world championships and has won multiple European Cadet Championships.
Richard Bernstein
Competition Organiser, Social Media Officer & Club Foil Coach
Richard is a qualified L3 Foil Coach, L2 Epee Coach and Team Manager, who has been working in the Bristol area since 2015.
As a fencer, Richard has competed for both Jersey and Great Britain in 3 Commonwealth Games and medalled at 2 European and 2 World games for MACCABI GB.
As Coach and Team Manager, Richard has led Jersey at Junior Commonwealth Games. In the summer of 2019 was Manager, Coach, and Athlete at the European MACCABI GAMES. For the 2022 Commonwealth Fencing Championship Richard represented Jersey as an Athlete, Coach and Team Manager and on the 2022 Maccabi GB team. Richard is also the youth Foil coordinator for England Fencing.
Ben Priestley
Club Foil Coach & Lead Senior Epee Coach
Ben is a qualified coach of all three weapons with Level 3 in both Foil and Epee. Since finishing a Master’s Degree in Sport and Exercise Science at the University of Bath he now coaches professionally in schools and clubs around the South West.
Madison Pearce
Club Foil Coach
Maddi
Dan Wide
Club Sabre Coach
Dan
Jane Glydon
Club Welfare Officer
Jane has been a member of the club community since the club began, as a parent of a young fencer. Jane has volunteered to help the club further by becoming our club’s safeguarding and welfare officer. In this role, Jane takes regular training to make sure she is equipped to deal with potential situations which may occur.
Any member or parent that may have any concerns or worries may contact Jane using the form on our contact page/
Yvonne Hopkinson
Club Welfare Office (North)
Yvonne