Clashing swords: Sophomore and NCAA contender Katherine Harvard duels with practice partner in Brown gym.

Caltech fencer takes a stab at NCAAs

In the midst of basketball madness last month you may have overlooked another NCAA championship taking place—the National Collegiate Men’s and Women’s Fencing Championships. No doubt the majority of that competition’s 144 participants spent the week before the final weekend of March 19 honing their skills—keeping in shape, developing strategies, practicing their parries and thrusts, their hand and foot movements.

But not, alas, Caltech sophomore Katherine Harvard. While she had the distinction of being one of only 24 athletes nationwide who qualified for her fencing event—the épée—she was lucky to squeeze in a single practice. That’s because for Harvard, the week prior to the competition was finals.

Such is life as a Caltech athlete, where rigorous academics always come before sports. Which makes it all the more remarkable that Harvard, 19, a sophomore electrical engineering major, competed for the second straight year in the prestigious NCAA tournament.

A little context: NCAA sports divide schools by size. Large schools like UCLA and USC are in Division I, midsize schools are Division II, and small schools like Caltech are Division III. That way, schools of like size compete against each other. Otherwise, it would be a little unfair for the likes of, say, the UCLA football team, which recruits athletes and has a student body of 25,000, to play Division III Cal Lutheran, which is not allowed to recruit and has a student body of 2,000.

But not in fencing. In this sport, the three divisions are lumped together to compete. During the regular season, Caltech competes against two groups of schools. During the regular season, as a member of the Intercollegiate Fencing Conference of Southern California, men’s and women’s teams compete against both NCAA and club teams. They are UC San Diego (NCAA), Cal State Fullerton (NCAA), UCLA (club), UC Irvine (club), UC Santa Barbara (club), and USC (club).

Caltech is also a member of the NCAA Western Region, so its year-end championship is fought against UC San Diego, Cal State Fullerton (NCAA), Stanford (NCAA), and the Air Force Academy (NCAA).

Modern fencing consists of three different swords, the foil, the épée, and
the saber. Harvard competes with the épée, which, says Caltech fencing coach Randy Paffenroth, requires the most strategy. “You have to observe your opponent carefully and wait until they make a mistake,” he says, “all the while not making mistakes yourself that your opponent can take advantage of.”

It was the right event for Harvard, who only began playing the sport as a freshman at Great Neck South High School in Long Island. “I started late. A lot of fencers start really young,” she says, “so it made me a defensive player.” Eventually, though, “I got to the point where my defense became solid enough so I could start looking for the offensive moves.

“But even now in tournaments I’ll go back into defensive mode, stay back and react, keep my distance, and try to catch their mistakes.”

The strategy has paid off. A fencing team consists of 18 people (3 men and 3 women for each of the weapons). During the regular season the women’s épée team was 11-1 and took first place, led by Harvard, who finished the regular season with 35 wins and just one loss.

Not a bad season considering that Harvard only practices twice a week during the season while her competitors probably practice every day. That’s all she has time for; the rest of her days are filled with classes and completing the daily sets (homework to the rest of us), which can take as long as five hours a night.

The uniform is heavy and hot, but “you get used to it and don’t notice it once you start fencing,” she says. There’s a protective body suit, along with an underarm protector, a breastplate, and a mesh mask. Still, even all that doesn’t always provide complete protection. The swords are spring-loaded and electronic. Points are scored by striking your opponent anywhere on the body. “You get bruised,” she says. “You can definitely feel it.” She recalls one time this season, competing against a woman from UC San Diego, when the tip of her opponent’s sword “got caught in my glove and went up my sleeve, leaving a long red line on my arm all the way to my shoulder.”

Besides her strong work ethic, says Randy Paffenroth, ”which you have to have to be a Caltech athlete,” Harvard’s strengths are “her combination of great footwork and maintaining distance from her opponent, along with her intelligence and observational acumen.”

It certainly isn’t to relax. “My strategy, if I’ve never seen them before, is to feel them out, then try something new. But it’s mentally stressful. If you’re tense, or afraid to try something, it can be nerve racking.”

In this year’s NCAAs, Harvard finished 22nd out of 24. No doubt she would have liked to do better, but for a Caltech athlete, it’s all about perspective, and reflects the attitude a true student athlete should have.

“It’s something fun, a sport I enjoy, and one that I can do my whole life. Just to be a casual fencer is enough for me.”
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