USA Fencing

(Dallas, Texas) – USA Fencing announced the 2015-16 All-Academic Team and recipients of the Absolute Fencing Gear® and Connor Porter Memorial scholarships during a ceremony at USA Fencing National Championships and July Challenge which are being held at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center through July 8.

ALL-ACADEMIC TEAM

All-Academic Team honors are bestowed on student athletes who have excelled in high school, and USA Fencing is proud to partner with Absolute Fencing Gear to recognize these outstanding young fencers.

Athletes with a GPA of at least 3.85 are eligible to be named to the First All-Academic Team. Second Team athletes include those whose GPAs are 3.7 – 3.84. Athletes with 3.5 – 3.69 GPAs are recognized on the Honorable Mention Team.

This year, there were a total of 509 student-athletes who achieved All-Academic honors, a 45-percent increase in applications from the previous year. To see the full 2016 All-Academic Team list please click here.

Of the more than 500 athletes who were named to the USA Fencing All-Academic Team, 117 hail from California, including 15 members of the Golden Gate Fencing Center. Lowell High School in San Francisco placed six student-athletes onto the team with fencers coming from Golden Gate as well as Halberstadt Fencing Club and the San Francisco Fencers’ Club.

ABSOLUTE FENCING GEAR SCHOLARSHIPS

Absolute Fencing Gear also pledged $10,000 in scholarships for the All-Academic Team program. One female and one male applicant were awarded $4,000 each based on both their GPA and essay. Two additional applicants received $1,000 each based on their submitted essay. The prompt for this year’s essay was: Prompt for the essay was "Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing." – Vince Lombardi, Coach of the Green Bay Packers football team. Do you agree? Why or why not? How do your ideas about winning affect what you do as a fencer? 

This year’s $4,000 winners were Dylan Kim (Marietta, Ga.) and Isabelle Thelen (Traverse City, Mich.) Wesley Bellin (Anaheim, Calif.) and Giana Vierheller (Houston, Texas) were awarded the $1,000 scholarships.

Kim was one of the 2015 scholarship winners as well and this year he becomes the second student-athlete to win the award twice. Kim recently finished his junior year at George Walton Comprehensive High School where he is an A16 epee fencer at the Atlanta Fencers Club under the tutelage of Gene Gettler. In his essay, Kim described the valuable lessons learned by losing his first competition as an eighth grader: “Losing that first tournament taught me humility and gifted me with a drive to work that could not have been handed to me any other way. If I had won, my arrogance would only have continued to cloud my judgment and my ability to grow as both a fencer and person … A great fencer possesses humility, grace, and sportsmanship. Only experiencing defeat can engender these characteristics. Winning is not everything; it is only what we learn from our mistakes, and how we deal with the next touch, that truly matters.”

Thelen will enter her junior year this fall at St. Francis High School. She competes at Three Swords Fencing Club with Coach Robert Bartle where she is a D15 foil athlete. In her essay, Thelen explained: “Measuring an opponent by their victories is rather like looking at Mount Everest through a pinhole. You are only allowing yourself to see a small, limited pixel of a much larger picture. I have tried to broaden my view when I see my opponent opposite me on the fencing strip. Whoever I see staring back at me is as painfully human as I am with good days and bad, with fear of failure, and with a desire to do well. I have discovered that knowing the person's favorite actions and personal frustrations are far more telling than a mechanical sum of victories and losses.”

Bellin and Vierheller both recently completed their senior years at El Dorado and Lamar High Schools, respectively. Bellin fences foil for Gryphon Fencing and Coach Eric Homgren. He will attending UC – Irvine in the fall where he will compete on the university’s club team. Vierheller, a 2016 Junior World team medalist, will compete at Columbia University – the two-time reigning NCAA Champions. Vierheller is an A16 epee fencer who fences for Alliance Fencing Academy and Coach Andrey Geva.

CONNOR PORTER MEMORIAL SCHOLARSHIPS

The Connor Porter Memorial Scholarship was created in 2013 through a generous donation from Connor's family members – Trish and Shannon Porter.

Connor passed away on July 26, 2012, in a plane crash with his father, Pat, and another friend shortly after winning bronze in the Division III foil event at the Summer Nationals in Anaheim. Connor had many friends in the fencing world and was well known for his sportsmanship and encouraging others. 

Connor's father, Pat Porter, was a two-time track Olympian (1984, 1988) and his mother, Trish King Porter, was a high jumper on the 1988 U.S. Olympic Team.

To be eligible for the scholarship, candidates must be members of USA Fencing and submit a recommendation letter from a coach, teacher or school administrator. In addition, all applicants must complete an essay on a new topic each year. This year’s topic was: “Connor would enter a room and by the end of the competition he would have a new friend. He’d help coach a new friend during the pool bouts, race across the room to cheer someone on, or spend time teaching a new fencer the ins and outs of a competition. He cared about other people and often his focus was not on himself but on others.”

This year’s Connor Porter Memorial Scholarships are awarded to a pair of graduating high school seniors – Jonas DeLisle (Hyde Park, Utah) and Allison Urban-Spillane (Rochester, N.Y.)

DeLisle is homeschooled and a member of Wasatch Fencing where he is coached by Ron Hendricks. DeLisle will attend Utah State University in the fall where he plans on starting the school’s first fencing team.

He fell in love with fencing the moment he walked into his first club five years ago. At fencing events, DeLisle is unable to leave the venue if he has friends still competing on the strips. He will stay to watch and cheer on his friends until the very end. That kind of dedication and love of fencing has also led him to be a volunteer coach at Wasatch Fencing. Three days a week he spends over six hours at the club, only two hours of which are spent focusing on his own training. The rest of the time he helps coach young, aspiring fencers, sacrificing his training time for the betterment of others.

For Urban-Spillane, a recent graduate of The Harley School and member of the Rochester Fencing Club under the guidance of Coach Semion Kiriakidi, it’s all about the love of the game. In addition to competing at small, local events as well as large NACs in all three weapons, she is certified as a referee in all three weapons and loves to take action photos of fencers in her spare time. But her favorite part of the sport is teaching others. At her club, she helped devise visually-based drills and lessons for a young fencer with slow auditory processing and ADHD. The boy, who was initially reluctant to learn, thrived under the new way of training and still fences more than two years later. That ability to pass on her love of fencing to others and to see them pay it forward is what drives Urban Spillane and makes her and DeLisle worthy recipients of this year’s Connor Porter Memorial Scholarships.