My mother had 4 kids in 4 years! I have an older sister, 24, a twin sister, 23, and a younger brother, 20. My mother was constantly finding new activities to entertain 4 toddlers over the summers. I’ve played tennis, baseball, basketball, and even Tae Kwon Do. In the summer of 2007, she had the idea of taking my 2 sisters and me to a fencing class at a local club.
My family is very active within the Jewish community, and at the time my father was the president of a synagogue we used to belong to on Long Island. We had heard about a local fencing club because the coach who opened it was originally renting out space in the ballroom of the synagogue to give fencing lessons.
My only exposure to fencing was through my Dad’s love of the movie Princess Bride, which I had probably seen 4-5 times by the time I started fencing at age 8. I never watched Star Wars (I still haven’t at this point so I probably should). I wasn’t particularly combative as a child either, so the notion of doing a combat sport had never occurred to me. One thing I did know was that, at the time, I liked the idea of doing an individual sport rather than a team one.
To this day, from the very first second I touched a foil (that’s the name of the type of fencing that I do!) I have still not fallen in love with something as quickly as I did with this sport. My sisters did not spark to it very much, but they found their passions in tennis and volleyball shortly after. It’s hard to remember what made an 8 year old so passionate about something. I don’t mean passionate in the sense that it’s just a fun activity, but a passion that comes from genuinely loving a craft and all that it entails. I was hooked.
The
Art
of
Fencing
Interview with Sam Moelis, COM '25