January 2025 NAC

January 2025 NAC, Day 3: Veterans and Cadets Shine with Gold Medal Achievements

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by Nicole Kirk & Rachel Luce

KANSAS CITY, Mo. —  The third day of the January 2025 NAC brought lots of smiles as Ronald Thornton (Capital Fencing Academy) brought home his second gold medal of the weekend. 


After winning back-to-back gold medals, Thornton claimed gold in Veteran Men’s Saber. His secret to success, “stay relaxed.”


Staying relaxed helped him focus on the things he needed to. He said he needed to “just focus on the bout that was in front of me. Don't get ahead and think of who I could potentially fence in the next round, because if I don't beat the person in front of me, then I am not going to fence to be a person that I'm looking ahead to defend.”


Christopher Guffey (Globus Fencing Academy) had a similar day as his final bout in the Cadet Men’s Saber event had him face a familiar opponent. 

“This is not a new bout to me. Me and him have fenced many, many times before, so going into it, I had an idea of how I wanted to start it, and obviously things didn't go the way I wanted.” 

“So I had to play smarter. Had to think harder, and he ended up getting me, like, really nervous in the second half and near the end of the first half, and I was struggling, but I was able to, I guess, finish it off in the end, which was really nice.”

Ending her individual medals on a high note, Julie Seal (Valkyrie Fencing Club) claimed gold in the Vet-50 Women’s Foil event. 

After a lot of preparation to make the return to the top of the podium, Seal said she had “been working very hard for this return to the final strip and return to the gold medal.”

From her experience, her advice to young fencers, “have a solid foundation of footwork, footwork before anything. And when I say footwork, I don't just mean be able to keep up or have enough muscle. I mean that's like, that's obvious. But what I mean is understand the technical element that footwork is in a fencing game, start there, and then the next thing after that is mindset.”

Day 3: Photo Gallery

Find hundreds of great photos on Facebook.


Day 3: Top 8 Medalists

Division I Men’s Epee

Gold: Leon Xiao

Silver: Yeisser Ramirez (Peter Westbrook Foundation & Fencers Club Inc.)

Bronze: Adam Rodney (Peter Westbrook Foundation & Fencers Club Inc.)

Bronze: Daniel Chirashnya (Academy of Fencing Masters)

5th: Tristan Szapary (Fencers Club Inc. & Princeton University)

6th: Miles Weiss (Alliance Fencing Academy & The Ohio State University)

7th: Oleg Knysh (Alliance Fencing Academy)

8th: Gary North (Penta Olympic Fencing Club)


Cadet Men’s Saber

Gold: Christopher Guffey (Globus Fencing Academy)

Silver: Eric Kwalwasser (Stamford Fencing Center)

Bronze: Andrew Chang Wang (Axis Fencing Club)

Bronze: Ethan Kim (Tim Morehouse Fencing Club)

5th: William Yan (Nazlymov Fencing Foundation)

6th: Alex Huang (Lilov Fencing Academy)

7th: Aidan Lee

8th: Rayn Patel (Capital Fencing Academy)


Veteran Men’s Foil

Gold: Dong-Ying Pai (Twin Cities Fencing Club)

Silver: Julian Tang

Bronze: Alexander Wood (Fencing Sports Academy)

Bronze: Rey Lopez (Heartland Fencing Academy)

5th: Omar Fadl (AIC Fencing Club)

6th: Stephen Jan (Metropolitan NYC)

7th: Michael Cho (Renaissance Fencing Club)

8th: Carlos Junco


Veteran Team Women’s Epee

Gold: Poor Life Choices (Heidi Chang, Kira Hansen, Haejung Hofman, and Sandra Marchant)

Silver: The WASPs (Marie Lawson, Nicole Polanichka, Charlotta Bowie, and Lauren Dunseath)

Bronze: Salle Auriol Seattle Kraken (Kundry Haberkern, Monica Exum, and Carola Schmid)


Vet-80 Women’s Foil

Gold: Bettie Graham (Chevy Chase Fencing Club)

Silver: Erica Julien (Forge Fencing Teams DUR & Cape Fear Fencing Association)

Bronze: Mary Turzillo 



Parafencing Men’s Foil

Gold: Abe Kaplan (Greensboro Fencing Academy)

Silver: Tareq Alqallaf (Zeljkovic Fencing Academy)

Bronze: Sean Glass

Bronze: Noah Hanssen 

5th: Zaid Al-Nasser (IndySabre)

6th: Kevin Reeve (Kern Athletic Fencing Foundation)

7th: Nicholas Badeaux (Fencing Institute Of Texas & Invictus Fencing)



Veteran Men’s Saber

Gold: Ronald Thornton (Capital Fencing Academy)

Silver: William Becker (Jacksonville Fencing Club)

Bronze: Max Terentiev (Fencing Academy of Westchester)

Bronze: Benjamin Dirsmith (Salle Auriol Seattle & Washington Fencing Academy)

5th: Jerry Liu (New York Athletic Club)

6th: Pietro Ferraro (Capital Fencing Academy)

7th: Kim Phillips (Zeta Fencing)

8th: Joseph Greene (Denver Fencing Center)


Vet-40 Women’s Foil

Gold: Christina Kaneshige (Denver Fencing Center & Polaris Fencing Center)

Silver: Kathleen Reckling (Fencers Club)

Bronze: Inga Cho (Renaissance Fencing Club)

Bronze: Ritva Irene Enright

5th: Kathryn Pierrynowski (Research Triangle Fencing)

6th: Polina McGrath (Plymouth & Ann Arbor Fencing Academy)

7th: Michelle Ostrikoff

8th: Annika Suchoski (Valkyrie Fencing Club)


Veteran Men’s Epee

Gold: Sergey Suponya (Medeo Fencing Club)

Silver: Eric Pho (Fencers Club Inc. & Rockland Fencers Club)

Bronze: Mark Nixon (LA International Fencing)

Bronze: Thomas Cheng (Stoccata Fencing Academy & Club & Orlando Fencing Sports Center)

5th: Michael Buckley

6th: Darcy Gates

7th: Zandro Mendoza (LA International Fencing)

8th: Remi Depommier (Vivo Fencing Club)


Vet-50 Women’s Foil

Gold: Julie Seal (Valkyrie Fencing Club)

Silver: Jane Carter (Marx Fencing Academy & Tanner City Fencers Club)

Bronze: Carolyn Granholm

Bronze: Morgane Bhatt (Halberstadt Fencers' Club)

5th: Darby Lytle (Lincoln Fencing Club)

6th: Lesley Chapman (Ludus Fencing Studio)

7th: Margaret Fagan (Fencers Club)

8th: Karen Lieu (Avant Garde Fencers Club)


Cadet Women’s Foil

Gold: Ella Calise (Tim Morehouse Fencing Club, Port Chester)

Silver: Gabrielle Gebala (Silicon Valley Fencing Center)

Bronze: Joy Liu (Golubitsky Fencing Center)

Bronze: Yuqiao Song (Canada)

5th: Alexandra Nissinoff (V Fencing Club)

6th: Audrey Yang (Golden State Fencing Academy)

7th: Renee Chen (Gutkovskiy Fencing Academy)

8th: Melody Tang (Fencers Club Inc.)


Vet-60 Women’s Foil

Gold: Bonnie Hennig-Trestman (Research Triangle Fencing)

Silver: Georgina Love (Space Coast Olympic Fencing)

Bronze: Rachel Brown (Fencing Center of Chicago)

Bronze: Sharon Angulot

5th: Badger Merritt

6th: Sharone Huey (Brooklyn Fencing Center)

7th: Esperanza Alzona (Nazlymov Fencing Foundation)

8th: Kathleen Hermes (Fencers School of Connecticut)


Parafencing Women’s Foil

Gold: Cora Weeks (German Fencing Academy)

Silver: Julie Grant (Salle Auriol Seattle)

Bronze: MariaIsabel Hinds (Kern Athletic Fencing Foundation)



Veteran Women’s Saber

Gold: Yelena Kalkina (Oregon Fencing Alliance)

Silver: Giselle Martinez Elizalde

Bronze: Eileen Foley (Denver Fencing Center)

Bronze: Zhao Xia Kong

5th: Meredith Steyer (Tanner City Fencers Club & Cape Cod Fencers)

6th: Nona Lim (United Fencers of Oakland)

7th: Agnieszka Koszyk (RedStar Fencing Club Chicago)

8th: Jenny Yang (Nellya Fencers)


Vet-70 Women’s Foil

Gold: Anne-Marie Walters (Masters Fencing Club)

Silver: Jennette Starks-Faulkner (Connecticut Fencers Club & Marx Fencing Academy)

Bronze: Jude Offerle (RedStar Fencing Club Chicago & University of Notre Dame)

Bronze: Lynnette Whitt

5th: Nora Gutkovskaya (Gutkovskiy Fencing Academy)

6th: Madelon Rosenfeld (Tim Morehouse Fencing Club & Fencers Club)

7th: Harriet Eckstein (Presidio Fencing Club)

8th: Gemin Channing

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