About us and our Sword Fencing and coaching services

We are a growing sword fencing and sports coaching company, founded in 2006, providing sports coaching and sword fencing tuition to people of all ages from 5 upwards, throughout the Gtr. Manchester and North West areas.

We are currently undergoing an ambitious expansion phase that will see our products rolled out throughout the country in several forms, based on our current, extremely successful products of school sword fencing experience days, corporate sword fighting team building, weekly child and adult sword fencing classes, and 7-11 children's sword fighting parties.

We specialise in introducing sword fencing to groups and individuals in a fun manner using the most modern equipment available with the long term aim of raising interest in the sport and increasing participation. For example, parents of children who access sword fighting via our school experience days are made aware of other opportunities in the local area by being given a list of local clubs for their child to attend. We also run our own weekly sword fencing club for children aged 8-11 in Monton in Gtr Manchester.

In line with our company motto: "Reinventing the noble art for the modern age", we pride ourselves on our flexibility and adaptability and, in addition to the products we advertise on these pages, some recent examples of our work that demonstrates this is as follows:

Shopping centre sword fencing promotional event - ROCHDALEWhole school day (150 pupils) + staff wellbeing session - OLDHAMPeter Pan, Literacy/Drama/Sword fencing cross curricular day - SALFORDWeekly classes for probation service - MANCHESTER+ many, many others - contact us for more details ..

Our Managing Director, Darren Birchall, is a qualified and highly experienced primary school teacher and an experienced sword fencer and coach, having been fencing for almost twenty years. As well as his teaching and sword fencing qualifications, he is also a qualified coach in several other sporting disciplines, such as orienteering, gymnastics, football, Multi-skills and SAQ among others.

His previous work is extremely diverse and includes mainstream primary teaching, PE coordination, ICT coordination and Drama coordination, schools sports partnership PE development (he currently occupies a freelance role as the Leadership Officer of the Salford North and South Sport Partnerships), curriculum PE teaching and development in both the state and private sectors, and many other PE, school sport and sword fencing related activities. He is also currently the part-time Sports Master at Branwood Preparatory School in Monton, Eccles, Greater Manchester.

Mob: 0777 604 6025

Email: info@balestra.co.uk

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