October 2025 NAC, Day 3 Recap: Calm Comebacks, Cadet Breakthroughs and a Triple Gold Sweep

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — After winning both individual and team gold at the 2025 World Championships in Georgia, Lee Kiefer OLY (Bluegrass Fencers' Club) could’ve taken a breather. Instead, she spent the summer traveling, teaching and training — with little time to rest.

“Summer was wild,” she says. “Worlds were amazing, obviously — not just individually but my young team, they popped off and were so fire. And then from worlds, we did not go home for another month. We did a little vacation, and then we started running clinics. It's been really great.”

Any concern that Kiefer’s busy schedule might slow her down disappeared on Sunday when she captured Division I Women’s Foil gold — one of seven titles awarded on the third day of the October 2025 North American Cup in Salt Lake City.

In the final, Kiefer trailed her new Team USA teammate Carolina Stutchbury (Epic Fencing Club & Columbia University) 12–14 before rallying for three straight touches to win.

“First thing, props to Carolina. We fenced at World Championships, and she made so many really smart adjustments. She came at me, and that was great,” Kiefer says. “I had a few ideas from my coach and Gerek [Meinhardt OLY], and this time I just wanted to execute those and win or lose. I wanted to have that form of discipline for the end of the bout, and it just worked out.”

Looking ahead, Kiefer is focused on steady progress toward the 2026 World Championships — and, eventually, the next Olympic cycle.

“Yeah, we're still a little bit away from the next Olympics,” she says. “I want to keep feeling my fencing, keep enjoying it, getting inspired with new ideas.”

In Cadet Men’s Epee, Boden Lai (Marx Fencing Academy & Cavalier Fencing Club) relied on focus and composure to earn gold in a nail-biting final that went to priority at 12–12.

“I just thought, ‘this is my final touch of the day, and I have to actually focus as much as I possibly can,’” he says. “Everything was really stressful, honestly, just from the beginning to end. I tried to take it one point at a time.”

Meanwhile, Garrett Schoonover PLY (Valkyrie Fencing Club) completed a remarkable weekend sweep, earning his third gold in as many days by winning Parafencing Men’s Saber. After topping the podium in epee on Friday and foil on Saturday, Schoonover showed his mastery of all three weapons — and his dedication to the details that make saber so unique.

“For some referees, they develop a cadence that becomes familiar the more you work with a particular ref,” he says. “You get used to their variations and cadence and how they breathe, especially with the microphone, you can hear breathing. And that has helped develop a lot of that reaction time.”

Saber is already lightning fast, but parafencing saber — sometimes lovingly described as a “knife fight in a phone booth” — takes it to another level.

“I naturally have some reaction time from all my years in the Army, but with saber, the spacing, the timing and the narrow windows to operate in and getting used to that timing really does take training and time,” Schoonover says. “I don't think I really had a good sense for it in the first year or two that I was fencing, and so it made the other two weapons a little bit easier. But as I started to get a sense of when those opportunities presented themselves, saber started to naturally improve just by having that understanding.”

Parafencing Women’s Saber champion Shelby Mitchell PLY (Valkyrie Fencing Club & Utah Fencing Foundation) also found her rhythm through focus and breath.

“If you watch my past bouts, you see me breathing a lot — and just finding my calmness, finding my focus again,” she says. “I work on that with my coaches.”

For Yifei Liu (Manhattan Fencing Center), that same kind of mental reset helped her rebound after a frustrating result in Saturday’s Division I Women’s Saber event. Determined to finish the weekend on a high note, Liu returned to the strip Sunday with renewed purpose — and left with gold.

“Going into today, I had a strong mindset, because I didn't do as well yesterday,” she says. “So I wanted to take the losses that I had yesterday and put them into my win for today.”

Her collaboration with her coach, both strategically and emotionally, proved key throughout the day.

“Most of the time, we just talk a little bit about preparation and then we see how the bout goes,” Liu says. “But it's really important for me to collaborate with him during the bout as well.”

From Olympic champions to first-time cadet winners — and even a triple-gold parafencing sweep — Day 3 of the October NAC offered a fitting finale of focus, resilience and inspiration in Salt Lake City.