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Gold All Around for Holmes, Van Brummen at Pan Am Games
July 24, 2015 | Women's Fencing
Princeton's Katharine Holmes and Anna Van Brummen will head home to the U.S. with a few gold medals after a successful week at the Pan Am Games in Toronto.
The Tiger pair, along with Penn State alum Katarzyna Trzopek, swept three matches Friday, July 24 to win team gold for the U.S. three days after Holmes won individual gold. Holmes is through three years at Princeton and is taking time off to pursue a 2016 Olympic bid, and Van Brummen is a rising senior.
Though this event didn't accrue points toward being part of Team USA in Rio next summer, Holmes feels like she's in a good spot to be included when the selections are final next April. The next event that will accrue points isn't until October.
"If I stay where I am right now, I will make the team," Holmes said. "It's looking really good going into the rest of the season."
The team event started with a 45-33 quarterfinal win over the Dominican Republic, with Holmes accounting for 16 of the 45 touches and Van Brummen another 14. Holmes closed out the win by out-touching Violeta Ramirez Peguero 6-2 in a rematch of the individual gold-medal bout.
A 32-31 semifinal win over Brazil followed, with Holmes getting 18 touches and Van Brummen 10. Holmes had a pair of turning-point bouts along the way, the first coming when she out-touched Rayssa Costa 5-0 to turn a 13-11 deficit into a 16-13 lead. The second of those key bouts was a rematch with Nathalie Moellhausen after the pair met in the individual competition, with Moellhausen pulling Brazil out of a four-touch hole against Holmes to tie it at 31-31 before Holmes had the winning touch in extra time to put the U.S. in the gold-medal bout.
"The last time that I anchored for the U.S. team was in the junior world championships, and I had lost in a similar situation," Holmes said. "When I was in that situation again, I thought, I'm going to win it this time. I'm not going to let it go. And when I did (win), I started crying on the strip. I was just so happy."
In the final, a 29-22 win over Venezuela, Holmes accounted for 17 of the 29 U.S. touches, including a 9-2 win over Maria Martinez to break a 20-20 tie and close out the win. Van Brummen added nine touches to keep the U.S. at no worse than a tie throughout.
In the individual competition, Holmes went 3-2 in pool bouts and finished second in her six-woman group, advancing to the elimination bracket. In the Round of 16, she held off a comeback from Canadian Leonora MacKinnon to win 14-12 before defeating Argentinian Clara Di Tella 15-6 in the quarters. Brazil's Moellhausen was up next in the semis, and although Moellhausen got out to a 4-2 lead, Holmes scored five straight touches and never relinquished that edge in a 10-7 win.
Tuesday's gold-medal bout against Ramírez Peguero of the Dominican Republic came after Holmes won the five-touch pool bout between the two by a 5-2 final, though the battle for gold was much closer. After trailing 3-1 at the end of one period, Holmes got out to an 8-4 lead during the third period before Ramírez Peguero caught Holmes at 9-9. Holmes was one touch away from ending it, up 14-12, but Ramírez Peguero avoided elimination by getting two straight touches and pushing the bout to overtime. Holmes, though, had the final touch, winning gold in the extra frame.
"I was ahead with two seconds left and she scored a touch and we went to overtime," Holmes said of that final bout. "When I scored the final touch, I didn't register that I had hit. I only registered the ref raising his hand toward my side. It was in slow motion realizing that I had won, so that was pretty cool."
Worldwide travel is part of being an elite fencer, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have an effect.
"It was really hard at that point in the day because we had just flown in from the world championships (in Moscow) about two days before and I was so tired," Holmes said. "It was hard to physically push myself, but I really wanted to win."
Holmes also had her Tiger and U.S. teammate by her side throughout the path to the individual gold medal.
"During the individual event, she was my coach because she knows my fencing," Holmes said of Van Brummen. "We just know each other's fencing so seamlessly. We just kind of speak very much the same language, and she also knows what I needed to hear when maybe I was losing a few points or getting a few points and needed to keep it going."
The camaraderie, built over the last few seasons in Jadwin Gym and elsewhere, carried right on through to the team gold medal.
"The fact that Anna and I had fenced on the Princeton team before, we had a really good team dynamic there," Holmes said. "Instead of starting from scratch with people that hadn't really fenced together before, we have a solid base to build from. And of course, winning with my teammate, both U.S. and Princeton, there's nothing better than that."
The Pan Am Games fencing page can be found here.