Mr. Carlos Kuri, Board Director
Mr. Carlos Kuri was born in 1973 and is a renown marketer, educator, movie and television producer for the Latin American market. He has produced dozens of television shows for Nickelodeon, an award winning feature-length animated motion picture (Heroes Verdaderos, 2010) and dozens of successful advertisement campaigns for prestigious clients worldwide. In addition, Kuri also was the exclusive Latin American distributor for Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro (Pokémon Card game, Magic the Gathering card game) and ran hundreds of CCG tournaments for thousands of participants throughout a decade.
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In 2017, Kuri’s interest expanded to sports where he saw an opportunity to apply his pedagogical, business and communication skills to sports development, specifically in the sport of Fencing which is a lifetime passion of his and his family’s. Kuri opened Sword Masters Club and Fencing Academy in 2018 and it quickly became the largest fencing club in Florida and one of the largest clubs in the nation.
In 2019, Kuri became the Vice-Chair for the Central Florida Division of USA Fencing and during his term, Central Florida became the largest growing Division in the USA that year.
In 2020 Kuri put Florida on the fencing map by hosting the historically largest and most prestigious USA Fencing regional and national youth tournaments in Florida: The Orlando Challenge 2020 RYC/RJCC, The Orlando Challenge 2021 RYC/RJCC, The Tampa Challenge 2022 RYC/RJCC, and “The 2022 Super Orlando Challenge SYC/RJCC” at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando. All these tournaments still hold the record of being the largest fencing tournaments ever made in the state of Florida.
In 2020 he founded FLA -“Fencing League of America”, an organization dedicated to
promoting fencing at grass roots by organizing tournaments and keeping national ratings and rankings at an amateur level. FLA is specially dedicated to promote the sport amongst youth and new fencers. Ergo it’s slogan “Fencing For All Forever”.
In January 2021, he became the AAU Florida district director for fencing.
In 2022, he was elected National Chair of Fencing for AAU, where he successfully worked with the staff of AAU to get incredibly affordable fencing insurance for fencing clubs, coaches and athletes.
In 2023 he was elected to serve as Fencing Technical Committee in the ISF, the International School Sports Federation and he ran the 2023 Fencing Gymnasiade in Rio de Janeiro in collaboration with the Brazilian Fencing Federation. In October 2024 the Gymnasiade will be held in the Kingdom of Bahrain.
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In his capacity as national chair of fencing for AAU, Kuri has enrolled thousands of new fencers and dozens of fencing clubs to AAU. He has organized and promoted hundreds of fencing tournaments. Including several AAU State Championships, National Championships, High-School Leagues and 3 editions of the prestigious AAU Junior Olympic Games, the largest and oldest youth sports event in the nation.
In his capacity as SMC owner and head coach, Kuri and his staff of highly professional coaches train over 200 fencers, including his own daughter and son, who as national Mexican team, has honored his club and his country with several important achievements such as: 2024 Cadet Silver Medal at the Pan-American games in Rio de Janeiro and Team Bronze Medal at the San Salvador 2023 Junior World Cup, 2022 Region 6 champion in the USA and hundreds of medals in other regional, national and international tournaments.
As Sword Masters Club owner, and due to his strong passion for community and youth, Kuri personally grants close to $80,000 USD in fencing scholarships every year to fencers that can not afford to practice the sport.
Kuri’s goals for the sport are ambitious, well structured and reach far into the future. His vision to grow fencing is not limited to serve the already existing base of fencers but to expand the size of the sport base exponentially making this sport accessible to hundreds of thousands of potential new fencers of all ages all over the country.
At a personal level, Kuri is happily married to his loving wife Riley for over 20 years with whom he has 2 adorable children, all fencers.