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Philadelphia Fencer Wins
International Fencing
Championship M
aia Mei Weintraub hardly
has any fencing foibles with
her foil.

Th e 19-year-old from Philadelphia won
gold on April 7 in Junior Team Women’s
Foil at the 2022 World Cadets and Juniors
Fencing Championships in Dubai.

A fi rst-year student at Princeton
University, Weintraub represented the
U.S. along with teammates Rachael Kim,
Zander Rhodes and Lauren Scruggs, all
of whom competed in the Junior cham-
pionship for competitors under 20.

Th e event hosted by the International
Fencing Federation featured more than
30 countries, including Israel, Ukraine
and Singapore. Th ere were 148 fencers in
the individual competition and 32 teams.

Th e Junior U.S. team faced its greatest
challenges against adversaries Italy and
Japan, and Weintraub maintained her
team’s lead throughout the tournament.

Th ough a team sport, each fencing
bout is an individual event, with a fencer
from one team going head-to-head with
another, trying to score up to fi ve points,
or touches, within the three-minute
round. Each team tries to score a cumu-
lative total of 45 points, with each fencer
picking up where the other left off .

In between scoring touches, Weintraub
was concerned with another important
tally: her GPA. Th e fencer continued to
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attend classes virtually and complete mid-
term exams during the tournament, pur-
suing her interests in ecology and biology.

“It’s not easy being a student-athlete at
an Ivy League school,” said Weintraub’s
father Jason Weintraub. “As you can
imagine, the majority of her professors
don’t care that she’s traveling around
the world representing the U.S. and
Princeton. Th ey’re more interested in her
own academic obligations.”
Not even fi nished with her second
decade of life, Weintraub has achieved
fencing renown, serving as the fi rst alter-
nate in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In
March, Weintraub won the NCAA indi-
vidual weapon championship in her debut,
becoming the sixth Princeton student to
win an individual championship and the
second to win a foil championship. Th e
month before, she won the Ivy League indi-
vidual championship. She also competed
in the 2019 European Maccabi Games.

In addition to competing at the college
level, Weintraub is eying a spot on Team
USA for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

“Fencing is very unique. I feel like it’s
not one of those sports where you can
just pick up a foil or weapon and just
start,” Weintraub said in a December
2020 Jewish Exponent interview. “You
have to dedicate yourself to learning the
art of fencing before you can actually do
it. And I think that dedicating that time
and choosing to do it makes it special.”
Weintraub began fencing at 9, taking
a beginner’s fencing class at the Fencing
Academy of Philadelphia with Maître
d’Armes (master of arms) Mark Masters.

Weintraub’s uncles — who themselves
grew up fencing in their hometown of
Detroit — fostered Weintraub’s interest
in the sport. Th ey had trained under the
same mentor as Masters and made the
initial connection between the two.

Th ough Masters had trained three world
champions in the past, his training was
only able to take Weintraub so far, as the
Philadelphia fencing scene remained less
competitive than its poles on the East and
West Coasts in New York and California.

Without strong
competition, Maia Weintraub, 19, is a fi rst-year
student at Princeton University .

Weintraub’s progress would plateau.

“With fencing, to be able to practice
the sport, you need to be with other peo-
ple, and you need to fence against other
people — that’s how you get better,” she
said in 2020.

In high school, her parents made the
leap to allow Weintraub to travel by
bus to the Manhattan Fencing Center,
a haven for up-and-coming fencers. In
addition to physical endurance train-
ing twice a week, Weintraub sometimes
traveled to Manhattan three times a
week aft er school, completing home-
work on her bus commutes.

In middle school, Weintraub was inter-
ested in playing the violin, and her family
was involved at Folkshul Philadelphia to
provide Weintraub with a cultural Jewish
foundation. When fencing became a seri-
ous pursuit, her parents pivoted.

“We recognized pretty quickly that
she has a real love for the sport. We
wanted to fuel her passion in something
because that’s important to us,” Jason
Weintraub said.

Masters recognized the passion as well.

In the game of “physical chess,” a fencer’s
mind has to be as sharp as their move-
ments. Th ough Masters treats all his young
students the same, he oft en senses potential
in some early on in their ability to handle
the pressure of an intense 3-minute bout.

Weintraub was a “money player,”
according to Masters, someone he could
bet on to perform at the highest level.

“Th e other person who may be doing
fi ne before — suddenly there’s more at
stake. Th ey get anxious, they get nervous,
and they make more mistakes,” Masters
said. “A money player is somebody who,
when the stakes are higher, will perform
better. Th at’s an important characteristic,
really, of every top-level athlete.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Courtesy of BizziTeam and USA Fencing
SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER