On occasional nights at the bottom of Morton Hill, a fury of neon blue and green light can be seen clashing together in midair. From far away, it might not make much sense, but the closer one gets, those glowing lights begin to take the form of lightsabers.
The Athens Lightsaber League (ALL) started as a couple friends just messing around and fighting with lightsabers, but it has blossomed into an activity enjoyed by not only members, but also any students who happen to catch the league in action.
ALL started when people began interacting with the members and getting excited over dueling with lightsabers. That attention made Isaac Stern and some of his friends consider making lightsaber dueling an official student organization.
“We were just interacting with everyone coming down Morton Hill on a Friday night, coming back from Court Street,” Stern, a sophomore studying sports administration and the treasurer of ALL, said. “Everybody was getting so excited like, ‘Oh man, lightsabers.’ We started talking about it more seriously and made it happen.”
Jordan Dearth (left) and Gage Antill (right), pose for a portrait during OU’s Lightsaber club on February 22, 2019.
During the warmer months of the school year, ALL meets more often, dueling with interested people walking by. The group even brings an extra lightsaber or two in preparation for those encounters.
The dueling ALL does is based off the Star Wars universe, where Jedis and Siths have certain forms for how they swing their sabers when they’re fighting and how to stand while in a duel. ALL takes the time to get those techniques down so they may duel properly.
“We try to learn as much of that as we can during the meetings,” Stern said. “Sometimes we’ll have official practices where we’re learning a technique. Other times we’re just fighting. It’s sort of just a mix of messing around and teaching moments.”
Although ALL works on forms and being articulate in duels, they’re still just a group of friends that enjoys hitting one another with lightsabers.
“It’s more like fencing in a way,” Stern said. “You’re trying to hit the other person before they hit you, but with less finesse.”
ALL has accumulated a good amount of members in the short time it has been an organization, but it’s always looking for more people eager to join.
“We’ve talked about doing flier handouts or tabling at Baker Center,” Stern said. “We’ve also considered having duels and filing with the university to hold funds so we can buy more lightsabers for public use, or rent spaces if we ever want to hold formal events. But that’s all long-term thinking.”
Michael Bryant, a sophomore studying games and animation and the vice president of ALL, has been a part of the group since the beginning and has seen the effect it has on the general public.
“It’s what we live for,” Bryant said. “People are happy to see us and know that we’re down here.”
Initially, Bryant couldn’t believe the positive response other students had toward ALL. People who come down Morton see lightsabers and eagerly want to fight with them. It’s something that makes sense in Bryant’s mind.
“I think in the beginning I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t believe how many people are not giving us the business about it, they’re totally about it,’” Bryant said. “After that, I was thinking it made total sense.”
ALL’s President Brady Knipp is training Bryant and Stern on the technical aspects of all different forms that takes place during a duel. Bryant hopes to get to the point where they train others so ALL can have a lot more experienced people who can participate in actual duels.
For now, Bryant enjoys focusing on the social impact ALL has on the people around him who constantly approach ALL’s duels to try it out themselves.
“The social aspect is so unbelievably cool. I love every single time somebody just runs down the hill like, ‘Can I fight with lightsabers?,’” Bryant said. “It’s my favorite experience just to make somebody’s whole night like that.”
Fellow member Gage Antill, a freshman studying biology pre-professional, is also super into the publicity ALL gets every night he and his friends are out fighting.
“When you’re out here with the community, intoxicated or not, it’s just a ton of fun to be with everybody here,” Antill said. “Even if it’s just random people, it’s always a great time for us.”
