Fencing is a combat sport that features sword fighting. The three disciplines of modern fencing are the foil, the épée, and the sabre ; each discipline uses a different kind of blade, which shares the same name, and employs its own rules. Most competitive fencers specialise in one discipline. The modern sport gained prominence near the end of the 19th century and is based on the traditional skill set of swordsmanship. The Italian school altered the historical European martial art of classical fencing, and the French school later refined that system. Scoring points in a fencing competition is done by making contact with an opponent.
The Harvard Crimson is the nickname of the intercollegiate athletic teams of Harvard College. The school's teams compete in NCAA Division I. As of 2013, there were 42 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at any other NCAA Division I college in the country. Like the other Ivy League colleges, Harvard does not offer athletic scholarships.
A foil is one of the three weapons used in the sport of fencing. It is a flexible sword of total length 110 cm (43 in) or under, rectangular in cross section, weighing under 500 g (18 oz), with a blunt tip. As with the épée, points are only scored by making contact with the tip. The foil is the most commonly used weapon in fencing.
Rebecca Ward is an American sabre fencer. She won the gold medal at the sabre 2006 World Fencing Championships after beating Mariel Zagunis 15–11 in the final, and took bronze in both individual and team sabre events at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. She also won the women's NCAA national individual sabre championship three times, the first in history to do so in sabre. In 2015, she was inducted into the USA Fencing Hall of Fame.
The Intercollegiate Fencing Association (IFA) was the oldest collegiate fencing conference in the United States. It was affiliated with the Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC).
Emily Phillipa Jacobson is an American Olympic sabre fencer. She won a bronze medal in the 2003 Pan American Games, and was 2004 Junior World Champion in women's saber.
Byron Lester Krieger was an American foil, sabre and épée fencer. Krieger represented the United States in the Olympics in 1952 in Helsinki and 1956 in Melbourne, and in the 1951 Pan American Games where he won two gold medals.
Ferenc Marki was an internationally known fencing master and fencing coach.
Emily Ruth Cross is a U.S. foil fencer who was a member of the 2008 Olympics U.S. Women's foil team. She is best known for helping win the team foil silver medal for the U.S. at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, along with teammates Erinn Smart and Hanna Thompson.
Abram "Abe" DreyerCohen was an American Olympic foil, épée, and sabre fencer.
Daryl Homer is an American right-handed saber fencer, three-time Olympian, and 2016 individual Olympic silver medalist.
The Penn Quakers fencing team is the intercollegiate fencing team for the University of Pennsylvania, located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The team competes in the Ivy League, within the NCAA Division I.
Noam Mills is an Israeli fencer, who competed in the individual women's épée event for Israel at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. She is a three-time junior Israeli champion in épée, and a four-time senior Israeli champion.
Eli Dershwitz is an American left-handed saber fencer, four-time individual Pan American champion, two-time Olympian, and the 2023 saber World Champion.
Benjamin "Benji" Nathanial Ungar is a US Men's Épée fencer. He was the NCAA Men's Épée Champion in 2006, and was a member of the USA Men's Épée team that won the silver medal at the 2010 World Fencing Championships.
Eric Tennyson Sollee was an American fencer and fencing coach. He fenced at Harvard University, where he earned National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) All-America honors. He coached at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, and the Carroll Center for the Blind, among others. As a coach, he is notable for finding ways to quickly develop competitive fencers and for introducing a paradigm shift in how to fence against classical fencers. Sollee trained a number of top competitors, including Olympians.
Zoran R. Tulum is a fencer and fencing coach.
Jessica Zi Jia Guo is a Canadian left-handed foil fencer.
The Ukrainian Fencing Federation commonly known by the acronym NFFU, established in 1992, is the governing body of Ukrainian fencing. Through 2022, Ukrainian fencers won 230 medals combined in the Olympic Games, World championships, and European championships.
