Chicago Family Gathering 2025

NESG invaded Chicago once again this year for Family Gathering, bringing a record number of 11 guild members to the annual training event hosted by Chicago Swordplay Guild. We hope to bring at least that many folks again next year, especially since we already know that future Family Gatherings will be held in April - mark your calendar!

The theme of this year was Curriculum vs Performance, so classes focused on things like taking what we learned in classes and figuring out how to use them in sparring, or how to use things that feel like games to work on our skills. The first class taught by Greg Mele, Dean of CSG, was called Spada a Dui Mani: Tradition vs School, where we took a look at the differences between the schools of Fiore, Vadi, and Marozzo. Since we only focus on Fiore here in NESG it was cool to see how the art evolved in later schools, but it was also easy to see where it stayed similar and remained part of the same tradition.

One of the best parts of Family Gathering is getting to spend time talking with people from CSG and the other daughter schools that we don’t get to see very often. We heard from each guild on Saturday at the Midsummer Meeting, where we announced our heisting of Rubiero, CSG’s gnome mascot, and issued our challenge to win him back at our spear intensive in October. 

Overall, Family Gathering 2025 was a huge success and we can’t wait to go back next year.