2025-26 Absolute Fencing Gear All-Academic Team

Here are this year's winners and winning essays:

Since I was seven years old, my grandmother has been the reason I have been able to pursue the sport I love: fencing. Multiple times a week, when my parents worked late, she drove me to fencing practice.She would drive slowly and carefully, gripping the wheel as cars rushed past us. I used to sigh in the passenger seat. According to Google Maps, the drive should take sixteen minutes. With her behind the wheel, it took nearly thirty. Sometimes I told her to go faster. More than once, I raised my voice. She would simply reply, "Safe better."My grandmother immigrated from Hong Kong fourteen years ago to help raise my sister and me, leaving behind her home, her language, and everything familiar to build a life in the United States. However, English still did not come naturally to her. When she hesitated in stores or struggled to explain herself, I felt embarrassed. I did not understand what it meant to leave one's homeland, come to an unfamiliar place, and make sacrifices for the family in pursuit of the American Dream.One night in January, practice ended late. When I walked outside, her car was not there.I called her once. No answer.Again. No answer.Then my father called: my grandmother had been in a car accident.My stomach dropped. Nobody knew where she was, nor could they reach her. Standing outside the fencing club, I imagined her alone in the dark, frightened and confused. Without information about her situation, my thoughts darted to the possibility that she was injured, or even worse. For years, she had worried about me in exactly that way. Until that moment, I had never understood what that felt like.Eventually, we learned that she had driven into a fence while trying to find her way back to the club. Although she was physically unharmed, the outcome could have been far worse. When I saw her later that night, speechless, I ran over and hugged her. For the first time, she seemed fragile and fleeting.Now, I do not rush her. When I ride with her, I notice the things I once ignored: her careful attention at every intersection, her grip on the wheel, and the way she still whispers, "Safe better." I also take the bus or carpool whenever I can, arriving at practice an hour early to accommodate bus schedules or my teammates' schedules. I sometimes leave practice early, so she can drive during daylight.As I grow older, I continue to realize more and more of the sacrifices my grandmother made for me. Witnessing her dedication has induced in me a sense of responsibility, not only to succeed in fencing but to protect her, as my grandmother.

All my life, there was nothing I wanted more than to be perfect. The perfect daughter, the perfect friend, the perfect student. For a while, I was. But as I got older and the activities and the responsibilities piled on, I felt my time being stretched thinner and thinner, like a rubber band almost about to snap.I had been playing piano since I was five, and to say I loved it would be an understatement. I lived for the feeling of the keys rushing under my fingers, for the heart-wrenching call of a nocturne, and for Mozart's seemingly eternal optimism. Later, I began throwing myself more and more into academics. I enrolled in a whirlwind of courses, relishing every solved math question and the incomparable pride of writing a good essay. Finally, there was fencing, which has been one of the hardest things I've ever done, pushing my limits both physically and mentally. I would spend practice wanting to go home, but get home only to want to go back.Unfortunately, there wasn't enough time for all of them. I heard it in my piano teacher's voice when he asked how much I practiced, saw it in my mom's eyes when I brought home my bio test, and felt it when my coach threw off his mask and walked down the strip without looking at me because I couldn't get a move right. In trying not to disappoint anyone, I had disappointed everyone.I knew I had to make a choice. I made lists, talked to my parents, and made more lists. I thought about quitting and about not quitting. I couldn't figure it out because something was missing in the objectivity I tried to maintain, in the pros and cons lists I wrote. None of them answered the question I really cared about: what activity was helping me become the person I wanted to be?I have to confess, I cried the day I quit piano. I cried for the sonatas I would never play and for the part of me that thought my piano dream would last forever. It was hard choosing something new and uncertain over what had been a lifelong passion. But fencing had allowed me to grow in ways that piano hadn't. Piano was my comfort zone, familiar and safe, despite however difficult it was. In fencing, I was constantly exposed to my weaknesses and forced to improve them. Every single tournament showed exactly how I measured up. Each lost bout was a public failure, forcing me to strip myself of my perfectionistic standards. Through it, I realized what mattered most to me wasn't comfort, but the guts to face my weaknesses.I still miss piano. Sometimes I hear someone practicing and wonder what piece I would be playing now. But every time I step onto the strip, I'm reminded of why I made my choice. I chose what challenged me most, and I realized that growth, not perfection, was what I needed.

We throw around the word "sacrifice" so freely in sports - whether it's the early mornings, the late nights, missed birthdays, forgotten texts, or lost time with those you consider dear. I don't believe I truly understood or confronted the weight of that word until a train ride home made it unavoidable.

It was on my way home from a competition, riding a train that was much too hot and cramped for that time of night, my phone reading 11:45, texting a friend about the disappointing result, when the reply lit up the screen. "Wow, you spend a lot of time fencing." It was a simple text. Most nights I might have swiped it away without a second thought, but something about those words hit me at that moment. As I looked out the small window, watching an expansive meadow stretching and then falling back into the dark in a surprisingly scenic part of New Jersey flying past, I felt a sudden sense of melancholy. For the first time, the full weight of how much of my life and time I had given to this sport settled over me. 

We talk about time the way we talk about money - casually, as though there is always a chance to make more. But the same cannot be said about time. There is no earning it back. Every second, every minute, every year, once gone, is simply gone. As Seneca, the Roman philosopher once wrote, "It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a great deal of it." The notion of wasting time is incredibly scary and the reason for my melancholy. 

It isn't as simple as that though because to sacrifice is one of the greatest privileges we are given. The word sacrifice comes from the Latin sacrificium, translating directly to "to make sacred." That is to say, I have been given the opportunity to sacrifice my time and make my craft sacred to me. So even though all the time I have given to fencing will not magically return, I can find comfort in how it was spent: not lost, but offered. That, perhaps, is the truest testament of love for the sport. Not that I have never questioned the cost, but that knowing the sacrifice fully, I would give it all again.

"So, are you going?"It was the fifth time in the past two days that my parents had asked me if I was fencing the upcoming fencing tournament that weekend. In my mind, there was no question about whether I wanted to fence; the opportunity to put my hard work from training to the test thrilled me. However, what conflicted me were my concurrent academic responsabilities. The day after my out-of-state event, I was supposed to take the SAT. Not only was the thought of getting enough rest to perform well on this test weighing on me, but a major term paper at school was due the following week. As I had been at the April NAC the weekend before, I knew I needed to set aside as much time as possible to writing and revising, as it would constitute twenty percent of my grade.As the weekend approached, the dreaded decision drew closer: I would have to confront my competing athletic and academic responsabilities and decide what took priority. Breifly, I had considered doing everything; couldn't I fly home the night of the event and take the SAT the next morning, all while writing my paper on the plane? Although it seemed like the perfect solution, I knew realistically I had to pick either fencing or school to focus on that weekend, for there was no way to give my all to both.What made this decision so hard for me was the fact that I believed I could manage everything. When I was younger, it was simple to be a student athlete: schoolwork was less time-consuming and training was lighter. It was difficult to accept that, now, in order to perform my best athletically and academically, I needed to sacrifice time to one or the other, not spread myself thin between the two. I believe I made this realization at the right time: throughout high school and going into college, knowing my own limits and how hard I can push myself to perform without burning out will be crucial.I was initially disappointed in myself when I told my parents that I couldn't attend the upcoming tournament; the perfectionist voice inside of me kept trying to convince me that I could do it all and made me feel guilty, like I was taking the easy way out. I still hear this voice, but I don't think it's an aspect of myself that needs to be completely shut out. I believe it's the manifestation of my strong desire to perform in both athletics and academics, and it's the driving force of my motivation. What allowed this voice to become my ally, however, was my adjustment of its definition of success. Striving for success isn't doing as much as possible as perfectly as I can; rather, it's strategically using and applying my strengths in order to achieve excellence in a way that allows me to push myself not past my limits, but to their very edge and continue growing.