100 Years of Princeton Fencing: The Beginning of Women's Fencing at Princeton

We're celebrating 100 years of fencing at Princeton this year, and one of the noteworthy moments in the history of fencing at Princeton is, of course, the founding of our women's program that has gone on to great success, winning 13 Ivy League titles, all between 1999 and 2024, after winning two National Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association titles in 1993 and 1994 and while combining with the men's team to win the 2013 NCAA title. The program has produced six NCAA champions and 11 Olympians, including three Olympic medalists.

From the book 100 Years of Princeton Fencing, written by Rob Dinerman in 2024 ahead of the fencing program's 100th anniversary, read below about the origins of the women's program at Princeton:

The 1988-89 season also marked the beginning of women's fencing as an official varsity sport. Women's tennis had achieved that status at Princeton in 1970-71,18 years earlier in just the second year of co-education. Princeton's first outstanding female athlete, Margie Gengler '73, along with an undefeated inaugural Princeton women's team, had captivated the entire campus. The very next year no fewer than five additional women's varsity sports - swimming, crew, field hockey, basketball and squash - were launched. Seven more women's sports - lacrosse, volleyball, cross country, ice hockey, track and field, soccer and softball - were all accorded varsity status in the decade that followed.

By contrast, women's fencing at Princeton got off to a much slower start than those other sports, although as early as autumn 1972 Janet Neutze and a few of her fellow freshmen showed up in the fencing room on Jadwin Gymnasium's C Level in search of a sport to fulfill Princeton's freshman year P.E. requirement. There had been an open house at Dillon Gymnasium during Freshman Orientation Week, and Neutze - after leaving the Crew table upon learning that the women's practices would commence at 5:30 a.m. - was so impressed by the positive and welcoming attitude of the people at the Fencing table, and so intrigued by the sport itself, that she decided to give it a try.

By the end of her freshman year, encouraged by the progress she had made and the degree to which being a member of the fencing team gave her "an identity" on campus, she decided to stay with it. Neutze wound up being the only member of that first group who fenced in all four of her college years, winning the inaugural Wanda Sieja Award at the end of her junior year and serving as captain of the 1974-75 and 1975-76 teams. The team had only club status and had very few formal matches against colleges, high schools and clubs in the area, but they practiced at the same time as the men's team and had their own fencing strip for practice with each other and occasionally with some of the men fencers as well. By Neutze's senior 1975-76 year, she and her teammates felt they had become part of the larger Princeton women's athletics movement that deservedly gave Princeton the reputation as the Ivy League college that most enthusiastically embraced the spirit of Title IX legislation. The team members felt something akin to an obligation to "give back" to the school by continuing in their chosen sport.

In autumn 1975 the Princeton women's roster finally had a member with a substantial fencing background when Dana Lieberman, who had fenced at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in New York, arrived at Old Nassau. During the previous winter she was the only woman among a group of Stuyvesant senior fencers who visited the campus and met with Coach Sieja. As she recalled, "We all fenced with him watching in the hope that he would put in a good word for us with the Admissions Department. Of that group, only Peter Moy and myself ended up matriculating at Princeton that fall as members of the Class of '79." Recalling the difference between women's fencing at Princeton compared to other Ivy League colleges, she noted, "I knew beforehand that Princeton did not have an established women's team, but I was still surprised that none of the other women on the team had any prior fencing experience."

Asked what the afternoon sessions were like during this mid-1970's, Lieberman recounted that, after stretching exercises and footwork drills as a large group, they would break up by weapon (men's foil, epee, saber and women's foil) to practice actual fencing, with Coach Sieja peeling off fencers to work with individually on hand skills. The women were assigned a single strip in the far reaches of the fencing room at Jadwin. Occasionally some women ventured over to the men's area to ask one of the male foil fencers to fence, but for the most part, the women only fenced with other women.

Although the women had no formally designated fencing coach and no budget during the 1970's, Coach Sieja did his best to accommodate women fencers and give them instruction and coaching. There was a women's bathroom with a shower in the bowels of Jadwin that they could use to change in and out of their fencing clothes. However, they had no designated lockers and the bathroom had no hair dryers. Several fencers from that era recall that their wet hair would often freeze during the long trek to Commons for dinner.

Since the women had no travel budget, for away meets they would all pile into team member Ricki Rogers's parents' old red diesel Mercedes. Unlike with the men, travel costs, including meals and hotels, largely were at the women's expense. When Lieberman was asked in an early-2020's interview why she and the other 1970's women stayed with Princeton's women's fencing team despite these difficult conditions, she responded that "during those early pioneer years we fenced because of the other women, the camaraderie among us and because we enjoyed the sport. Fencing gave us an opportunity to spend time with other women and cheer each other on."

Lieberman herself was cheered on by her teammates at the end of her freshman year when she scored a top-five finish in women's foil at the 1976 Junior Olympics in Detroit. Her assessment of why the group stuck with the sport despite its relatively unsung and financially unsupported status is echoed by most of her contemporaries, who have called their fencing years as fundamental to their overall Princeton experience. Jaye Pershing, for one, whose initial efforts as a freshman in autumn 1975 in field hockey and the theater saw little success, found such fulfillment as a member of the fencing team (including winning the 1976 Wanda Sieja Award) that she forthrightly declared, "Fencing changed my whole life at Princeton."

Foil, as noted, was the only weapon in college women's fencing at the time. The lineups for the dual meets that gradually increased during the 1970's consisted of four fencers from each team, with each fencer having a bout against all four fencers from the opposing team, or 16 bouts in all, with each bout ending when a fencer scored four touches rather than five. In hindsight, it is remarkable how those half-dozen women persevered and progressed to the point that they laid the groundwork for future women fencers at Princeton and the women's dynasty that eventually occurred.

The first article about women's fencing appeared in December 1977 in the Daily Princetonian, and it began by posing the rhetorical question "How do you lose a tie?" The Princeton women fenced Temple to an 8-8 standstill, but lost because their 54 combined touches were one less than Temple's 55. The five-person team consisted of captain Margo Jacqz, sophomore Diana Hoadley and freshmen Lisa Vienna, Diana Anderson and Victoria Bengualid, all of whom had fenced in high school, representing a significant turnaround from the situation five years earlier. They were, however, backed by another group of fencers who were just learning the sport and showed "a lot of promise if they stick it out," according to Jacqz, who added that the Princeton squad hoped to build a strong nucleus not only by attracting experienced fencers but by developing some home-grown talent as well. The following 1978-79 season, during which the dual-meet record was 8-4, was highlighted by the performance of Vienna, who placed first in the Individual competition in the New Jersey regional edition of the National Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association (NIWFA) and thereby qualified for the NIWFA national tournament. Princeton's fifth-place team finish, however, left the Tigers one position short of making it into the NIWFA team event, which was limited to the top four teams from each region.

With the exception of former Junior Olympic semi-finalists and co-captains Hoadley and Bengualid, the 1979-80 women's team was plagued by inexperience - with a poor won-lost record. Yet Bengualid saw a silver lining even in that situation. After lamenting the scarcity of experienced fencers to help the new members at the beginning of the year, she noted, "In some ways this was an advantage in that everyone was starting on the same level and felt they could try out for the team without embarrassment." Hoadley added, "It takes about three to four months of weight-lifting, running, coordination training and mental preparation for the full development of a team. The real training takes place when one is aware of the point at all times and of one's position."

Some of Hoadley's commentary must have resonated, because when the Tigers faced Navy at the outset of the 1980-81 season, they won handily. Afterwards junior Bonnie Bermas, citing the extensive preseason conditioning effort that had paid off that day, said, "After four months of practice, this was a good win psychologically." Later that winter the team placed third in the New Jersey Championships, behind William Paterson and Fairleigh Dickinson, and Vienna again won the Individuals, defeating her teammate Hoadley in a final-round match that came down to 4-all, sudden death. before Vienna scored the decisive touch.

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