On Tuesday and Thursday from 9 p.m. to midnight, you can hear the sounds of epees clashing through the halls of the Physical Education Building. This is how the Trojan Fencing Club trains, and these efforts took them all the way to gold. 

The club just returned from Pennsylvania with one of its most successful years on record. It attended the United States Association of Collegiate Fencing Clubs Championships April 5 to 6, held at Penn State University. The women’s team faced off against 36 universities and clinched the No. 1 title in the U.S. 

“When they were announcing the top schools, we were like, ‘We’re probably not going to get it, because the other schools were all really good,” said Susanna Lee, the gold medal winner in women’s foil and a junior majoring in business administration. “But then super surprisingly, we got the [championship].”

Reilly Brislawn, a junior majoring in physics, won silver in men’s epee; Andrea Shin, a junior majoring in health promotion and disease prevention studies, won bronze in women’s saber. 

“What’s really cool about Trojan Fencing Club is that it brings together people of all different levels of experience,” said Sophia Berry, the club’s president and a junior majoring in art history. “We have beginners in the club [and] we have people who have been fencing for over a decade, so it’s really great to have people learn from each other.”

Olivia Hau, a member of the women’s epee team and a sophomore majoring in journalism, thought there was “no shot” of them becoming the top women’s team in the country. However, she was proven wrong. 

“I turned back and saw all the 20 teammates cheering. Then, at the end [of the competition], we did our USC chant, really loudly and obnoxiously. But it was great. It was a really fun moment,” said Hau.

Berry, Hau, Lee and Brislawn all joined the club in their freshman years and have been contributing ever since. As they witnessed the club’s growth, they also became dedicated to improving their skills and strategies.

“We do lots of footwork, lunging and back and forth, practicing our movement on the fencing strip. And then we’ll go into reflex drills or tip control drills to work on our accuracy with the blades,” Brislawn said.

Trojan Fencing Club attended the national tournament last year but didn’t return home with as much success. Lee said their performance was worse in part because it was their first national-level competition after the pandemic and partly due to lapses in travel accommodations.

“We’re a lot [better] prepared this year to go to the national. We arrived a day earlier. Then everyone was well rested. Everyone was super supportive,” Lee said.

Scott Frank, the fencing team’s coach for the past 25 years, said he leads the club with the hope “to make it fun.” 

The club community can help people find a sense of belonging, Frank said. 

“You have the more experienced people help the newer people, and partially try to make sure that everybody feels like they’ve got something to do,” Frank said. “The advanced fencers aren’t bored, and the new fencers don’t feel like they can’t learn. That’s what brings people to practice, and that’s what makes them better.”

Apart from training and preparing for competitions, another goal of the club is to make fencing a more accessible sport, Berry said. The club offered a hotel and flight stipend for the 21 fencers it brought to the national championship. 

“It really speaks to how Trojan Fencing tries to make the sport accessible and inclusive for people of all different backgrounds and levels of experience,” Berry said. “The fact that we were able to take something that’s normally so expensive and lower the entry barrier to entry is really special.”