By Hadar Katsman, Features Editor
Beth Levin (SCW ‘26) has a smile on her face as she tackles her next lap around the half-court gym in Stern College for Women’s main school building. The sound of shoes squeaking echoes in the background as each step hits the gym floor, in sync with the upbeat music.
“I always thought it’d be cool to be on an athletic team,” Levin told the YU Observer. Levin is a junior at Stern pursuing Yeshiva University’s Pathways program with the Wurzweiler School of Social Work. At the beginning of the Fall 2025 semester, she realized her classes ended quite early in the day, which left her with a lot of free time that she wanted to fill with something active. So, she decided to join the YU Women’s Fencing Team.
Levin had no previous experience in fencing and was never on any sport teams growing up. Joining the fencing team has brought her many new experiences and perspectives on the YU community. “It’s nice to be part of YU in a different aspect besides just clubs,” she said. “I just wanted something that felt more meaningful than just going to AMC.”
‘On guard. Ready. Fence!’
The student athletes arrive on the 11th floor of 245 Lexington at 7 PM for their two-hour fencing practice.
The AC unit chugs along loudly in the background, but the music soon drowns it out as the athletes, who by now have all put on the bottom half of their fencing uniforms, take off in a single-filed line to begin their running warmup.
The gym starts to heat up. Levin is not used to the intensity of the warmup, but she does not stop. She continues grinning even as she runs to catch up to her teammates. “It’s really hard to keep in shape,” Levin said. “It’s definitely hard to maintain it and constantly be top tier and fighting and trying to put yourself in the best shape so that you can work on your reflexes.”
Ten minutes later, it’s on to stretches and a water break before Head Coach Roberta Gonzalez starts the athletes on footwork drills, without their full gear on or their swords. With over ten years of experience in international fencing competitions and after being an assistant coach on the University of the Philippines’ varsity fencing team, Gonzalez joined the YU Women’s Fencing Team in 2015.
Fencing emphasizes smaller movements, such as lunging forward, shuffling one’s feet back and forth quickly and swift sword techniques to disarm one’s opponent. “You’re constantly moving and there’s so much into it that I would never realize until I joined it,” Levin said. “That makes it more rewarding to me.
Gonzalez models the techniques alongside the athletes. She offers words of encouragement and constructive comments like “make your steps smaller” and “even quicker” to her team during the entire practice.
“The coaches are super helpful and excellent at putting their finger exactly on what should be fixed,” Naava Eisenberg (SSSB ‘29), who joined the fencing team this fall without previous fencing experience, told the YU Observer.
After some intense footwork exercises, the players don their full fencing gear, including fencing masks and gloves, and unsheathe their fencing swords from their black duffel bags. Everyone pairs up and takes to a side of the court to practice fencing each other. Gonzalez puts on her own uniform as well and works one-on-one with athletes to give them extra guidance or to teach them a new skill. “My favorite part of fencing practice is taking the lessons the coach teaches me and trying them out during free fencing with the team,” Sarah Tobias (SCW ‘26), one of the two fencing team captains, told the YU Observer. This is Tobias’ third year on the team.
Tobias and her fencing partner chat and joke around between rounds as they catch their breath. “Everyone’s close and you’re all just in it together, and everyone is supporting each other and training each other,” Levin said. “It’s really fun to play against different people and challenge yourself.”
Practice Schedule
The YU Women’s Fencing team’s 2025-26 roster has ten players total. The team is diverse in age and previous fencing experience, but they enjoy each other’s company, and each player brings her own energy to the team. “Everyone has a part which is super important and everyone feels important, even people that are new versus people that have been there for a while,” Levin said. “We’re all putting in the work, and I really like that we’re all still able to practice [together] even if we’re at different levels.”
The fencing team’s practice schedule, compared to the Women’s Basketball team and other YU athletic teams, is not overly demanding. Athletes only need to come to two out of four practices a week, between Monday and Thursday. Because they are given flexibility in deciding their schedules, there are only around three to five players at every practice. Levin appreciates that the fencing team is not very competitive. “They’re really open, and it’s more about your dedication and how long you commit, and it’s not about prior skills,” she said. “I think that’s awesome because I really want something that I could put the hard work in and have fun and exercise, but I don’t have to be competitive.”
Levin wishes the team would coordinate to come to practice on the same days because it is more fun and motivating when more of the team is present. On the other hand, when there’s not many people at practice, it opens up room for her to do one-on-one practice with the coach, who can teach her specific skills more closely.
On top of that, Levin also thinks that practices should have more structure. “Sometimes it feels like there isn’t a set routine,” she said. “I learn these skills but I still feel like I’m lacking and I kind of have to initiate what I want to learn.”
There is at least one coach at every practice. Alongside Head Coach Gonzalez is Assistant Coach Sharone Huey and Assistant Coach Julia Polster. “They ask us how we’re doing and I really feel like they care,” Eisenberg said.
YU vs. Ivy Leagues & D1 Teams
There are six tournaments throughout the fencing season, which begins in September and ends in February. Each tournament takes place on a Sunday. On these days, the athletes wake up at 6:30 AM to travel to the tournament, often a two-hour bus ride away from Midtown Manhattan, and do not return to their dormitories until around 9 PM.
Despite how exhausting the traveling can be, “We get so close together at the meets,” Levin said of her team. “It’s a really great bonding experience.”
This season, YU has a losing streak of 0-10, though some of the athletes won a few rounds at some of the tournaments.
“Even at competitions, no matter who wins, the opposing teams shake hands and say something like ‘good work,’” Eisenberg said. “Friendships can easily form from these meets, it almost doesn’t feel as though we’re against each other.”
There are three types of fencing disciplines, named after the different types of weapon used, foil, epée and sabre. Stern’s fencing team has players in each category. The disciplines are not ranked in terms of skill level, but they do differ in terms of which areas of the body count as valid hits and the rule of priority, or “right of way” — in foil and sabre, the athlete must be the one to initiate the attack and successfully hit a valid target in order to win the point. This does not apply in epée, which rules that whoever hits a valid target first wins the point, regardless of who has priority, or initiated the attack.
In a fencing match, each valid hit earns one point. The first person to five points or the opponent with the highest score within three minutes wins the round. At tournaments, there are only three players per weapon, or discipline, and each player plays three rounds per school. For example, if YU plays five schools in a tournament and there are three athletes who play on foil, then those three each play three rounds per school, totaling fifteen rounds per person; this does not include epée and sabre athletes’ rounds. If there are more athletes than discipline limits permit, athletes can sub in for one another so that everyone gets to play a round.
The Stern fencing team is a Division 3 (D3) sports team, meaning it is much less demanding and intense than a Division 1 (D1) team, many of which are Ivy Leagues. At their tournaments, though, the athletes face both D1 and D3 fencing teams, including Yale University’s D1 team.
“It’s very intimidating to go against D1 athletes who have been training for many years,” Leora Schramm (SCW ‘26), co-captains with Tobias, told the YU Observer. “However, it is also a really cool challenge because sometimes we do win against the D1 athletes and it feels very empowering.” At her most recent meet, Schramm beat three D1 athletes, which she said “was a really exciting moment.”
Most D1 athletes began intense training for their sports from a young age. Levin recalled a D1 athlete telling her after a game that she began fencing at five years old and got recruited on a full athletic scholarship to Yale. “It’s incredible to play against these high-rank[ing] schools,” Levin said, but she “wish[es] that we’d only fight people within D3 to give ourselves more of a chance.”
Schramm, who is in her third year on the team, said, “I do wish that fencing got a bit more attention than we currently do because we actually do well in [our] seasons.”
Stern’s Fencing team doesn’t receive enough funding from the university to purchase new uniforms and gear. Most jackets and masks were passed down year-to-year, and some gloves have holes in them. It can be very difficult when not everything fits properly. “It costs a lot to fund all the materials, but sometimes we wish there were more options and more sizes and more than just these used ones that are falling apart,” Levin said.
Was It Worth It?
As the season hits its climax, Levin reflects on joining the fencing team and emphasizes that it was “definitely worth” the time and effort this semester. “You get from it what you put into it, meaning you can end up barely going to practice and just showing up to the tournaments, but you’re not going to get much from it,” she said.
“I really love our team so much and I think everyone is incredible,” Schramm said.
Joining a sports team taught Levin the importance of community pride and “working for something more than me.” She added, “Your individual losses or wins, it does matter but also doesn’t in the sense that you have to be there for the team.”
To Levin, what matters most is when an individual works hard and eventually sees how much they improved over the season. “You just see how much time you put into it and how much more you’re improving and learning, that’s what you get from it.”
Photo Credit: Hadar Katsman