Phenom Thompson brings experience to fencing team

His fencing accomplishments speak for themselves. He was named the best athlete in California at the State Games, was the winner of the epee event at the Cleveland Open North American Cup, a member of three world championship fencing teams as well as the world university games team. He won a silver and two bronze medals in junior world cup competitions — more than any other American ever — and won both the U.S. junior national championship and the Junior Olympic championship.

This fencing phenom is freshman Soren Thompson of San Diego.

Thompson learned how to fence at the age of seven while attending a program at the University of California at San Diego. At 15, he started training in Los Angeles with a professional instructor.

As Thompson received more and more recognition for his accomplishments, college fencing programs came running for him to sign with their schools.

"The obvious choice would have probably been Stanford," Thompson said. "It has a strong fencing program, gives scholarships, has good academics and is certainly a lot closer. What made me choose Princeton was its proximity to New York City, as well as its academic strength."

Princeton also overcomes its lack of fencing scholarships with team unity.

"The team is great," Thompson said. "It's really the closest team I've seen."

And, so far, the team has been really enthusiastic about the freshman coming aboard.

"He's really going to be a good fencer and should definitely get some coverage," sophomore sabre Dan Pratt said.

"We expect a lot out of him, especially at NCAAs," senior captain sabre Terry Kim said.

In some ways, though, the transition to a university fencing program has its obstacles — one of the most important being the change from one-on-one training with a coach to the atmosphere of having one coach for the entire team.

"I was accustomed to just the coach and me, and now it is more of an individual thing," Thompson said. "During practices, we will split up into our different squads and generally do conditioning, drills or individual practicing with [head] coach [Michel] Sebastiani."

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Thompson has also had to adapt to a different fencing format now that he is part of a larger team. In certain competitions, the number of touches to achieve victory changes from bout to bout — a subtle, but important change.

"Fencing is still fencing," Thompson said, "whether you are with a team or by yourself, or if it is 15 touches or five." Although he has somewhat modified his training regimen and the competition format has been changed, Thompson has still performed well this season. In his first college competition — the Penn State Open — Thompson garnered a third-place finish in the epee, which was the best showing on the men's team.

In the team's most recent competition at New York University, Thompson went 6-3, with all of his losses coming against Penn State fencers — the defending national champions — in the first round of the competition.

"I didn't prepare myself well enough going into it," said Thompson, who lost two of his matches against Penn State by a combined total of only three points.

He was able to use these bouts, however, as a warmup for the rest of the competition, where he won six straight matches.

Clearly, Soren Thompson's arrival at Princeton will be a tremendous help to the men's fencing team. As he acclimates to collegiate competition he will certainly be a force to reckon with.

It shouldn't be long before Thompson is once again showered with accolades for achievements that really speak for themselves.