Chris Spencer enters his fifth year in 2011-12 as head coach of the Haverford College fencing programs. In his first season he directed the women's team to their best finish ever at the National Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association (NIWFA) Championship and coached two fencers to the NCAA Championship.

Last season's men's squad captured the Middle Atlantic Fencing Association (MACFA) team title for the second year in a row and registered a school-record 25 wins which helped propel Spencer to the MACFA men's coach of the year award. The women won a school-record 20 matches, and the foilists took home bronze medals at the inaugural U.S. National Weapon Squad Championships.

In the 2009-10 season, the men’s squad captured the MACFA title, put two fencers in at-large seats for the NCAA championship and sent one, freshman Ben Van Son, to nationals where he finished 21st individually pushing the Fords to a 24th-place team finish.

Spencer guided a quartet of women’s fencers to 2009-10 all-conference honors in the Eastern Women’s Fencing Conference which also bestowed the EWFC Coaching Staff of the Year honor on the Haverford leader and his assistants. In addition, four-time all-EWFC epeeist Emma Buckingham was named the EWFC Woman of the year and won gold at the NIWFA individual championship.

Prior to Haverford, Spencer was head coach at Mount Holyoke College. He is just the fourth mentor in the 75-year history of Haverford's varsity fencing program. Spencer inherits the Fords' successful tradition created by coaches Henri Gordon (1932-82), Jim Murray (1982-2001) and David Littell (2001-07).

A competitive fencer for more than 15 years, Spencer began fencing under coach Hank Powell at Hopkins High School in New Haven, Conn. He attended Brandeis (Mass.) University and obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics with a minor in anthropology. A foil fencer for Judges coach Bill Shipman, he was an Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC) finalist and a two-time qualifier to the all-divisions NCAA Championships. Spencer was also a Division II finalist in foil at the 1993 USFA National Championships.

Spencer was later an instructor at the Boston Fencing Club, where he studied under former Soviet guru Pavel Zelikman for four years. Spencer trained in Pisa, Italy, for two years before moving to Northampton, Mass., in the fall of 2002. He became interim director of the Northampton Fencing Center in 2003 and established a junior program there. Moving to Mount Holyoke in 2005, he built a successful club team involving 30 competitive fencers. Spencer has also served as an assistant to Wellesley College head fencing coach Gamil Kaliouby.

His students believe that Spencer is a terrific motivator and freely shares his joy of fencing. He says that "training and competition are important exercises in self-discovery and personal growth." In other pursuits, Spencer is an accomplished artist of murals and canvas paintings, and pen and ink illustrations having studied at Scuola d'Arte Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence, Italy, and at the Art Institute of Boston.