How a U.S. Paralympic Fencer Is Helping Build Parafencing in Namibia

Published April 23, 2026 · Updated September 21, 2026

Jataya Taylor PLY, a retired U.S. Marine and U.S. Paralympic fencer, helped seed a parafencing program in Namibia — first with donated equipment and a demonstration, then by coming back to see what had grown.

A handcycle across southern Africa

Per USA Fencing, Taylor handcycled across southern Africa in the summer of 2023. Along the way she delivered donated gear from the Denver Fencing Center and the Denver Fencing Foundation and ran a parafencing demonstration.

That is a small intervention by most measures: some equipment, one demo, one visitor passing through. Most efforts like it end there.

What made it stick

The difference, per the source, was a local coach. Shekinah Mpunwa kept pursuing a program after the demonstration ended.

This is the part of the story that transfers to any club anywhere. Equipment does not create a program. Interest does not create a program. What creates one is a person on the ground who keeps showing up after the exciting visit is over, books the space, and holds the next session.

The return visit

Taylor returned in October — per the context in USA Fencing's article — and found the program had grown, with support from the Namibian National Paralympic Committee and the local fencing community.

USA Fencing describes her reaction as surprise. We will leave her words in the official article rather than paraphrase them loosely; the honest summary is that the program she found was further along than the one she had left behind.

During that October visit, the Denver Fencing Foundation donated an official fencing chair painted in Namibia's national colors.

Why a fencing chair matters

For readers unfamiliar with parafencing: wheelchair fencing is contested from a frame that fixes the chair in place at a set distance, so footwork is removed and the bout is decided by blade work, timing, and torso movement. Proper equipment is not optional — the frame and a compliant chair are what make sanctioned competition possible at all.

Donating an official chair is therefore not a symbolic gift. It is the difference between a demonstration activity and a program that can train toward real competition.

Painting it in the national colors is the part that reads as care rather than charity — the equipment arrives belonging to the people using it.

The transferable lesson

Three things did the work in this story, and none of them required a large budget:

Someone brought usable equipment rather than promises.
A local coach took responsibility for continuity.
A national committee and existing fencing community gave the new program somewhere to attach.

Any club, in any country, that wants to add a parafencing offering is working with roughly that list.

Saber, parafencing, and the same discipline

Parafencing is contested in all three weapons, saber included. The saber bout from a frame is unmistakably saber — right of way, the priority of the attack, and the same brutal margins of timing.

For a club like ours, the honest position is that we are a saber club and we are not going to claim a parafencing program we do not run. What stories like this one do is set a standard for how a sport grows: someone local decides to run sessions, and the rest follows.

Train with us in Bethesda

Saber Nation is a saber-only club at 4701 Sangamore Road, Suite LL2, Bethesda, MD 20816. If you want to try the weapon this story is written about, start with a class — see our saber fencing classes in Bethesda or contact us.

Official USA Fencing source: How a U.S. Paralympic Fencer Is Helping Build Parafencing in Namibia — published April 23, 2026.

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