Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Trio of Fencers Current and Former Head to Chile for Pan Am Championships
April 11, 2015 | Women's Fencing
The Games themselves may still be more than a year away, but the qualification path for Rio 2016 begins next weekend for the U.S. fencing hopefuls at the Pan American Championships in Chile.
Princeton will have three current or former fencers at the Pan American Championships, with saber Eliza Stone '13 and épées Katharine Holmes, who is a volunteer assistant coach at Princeton while taking time off to pursue her Olympic bid, and Isabel Ford, who is finishing her junior year. Holmes will have her senior year remaining when she returns to Princeton.
Holmes and Ford will be up first for the individual épée competition Saturday, April 18, three days before the team event. Stone's individual saber competitition will come Sunday, April 19, three days before her team event.
The Pan Am Championships begin a year-long cycle of qualification for the Olympic Games next year. Fencers will accrue points toward representing the U.S. at the Olympics from the Pan Am Games until the American entrants are finalized in April 2016. A Princetonian was a medal winner at the last Olympics, with Susannah Scanlan '14 winning bronze with the American épée team.
All three fencers have had great success at Princeton. Stone is the program's most recent individual NCAA champion, winning the saber in 2013 while all three were part of Princeton's first combined men's/women's NCAA championship team that year. Stone is also the first women's saber to be a four-time All-America, and she was a four-time All-Ivy and three-time first-team All-Ivy honoree as well.
Though their Princeton careers are ongoing, with Holmes standing as a three-time All-America with a high finish of third at the NCAAs as well as a three-time All-Ivy, two-time first-team All-Ivy honoree. Ford was an All-America and an All-Ivy honoree for the first time this year, placing seventh at the NCAA Championships last month and earning second-team All-Ivy recognition at the Ivy Round Robins in February.