Senior Campbell returns from Africa to lead women's fencing

Senior fencer Lindsay Campbell is very attached to her epee.

For those of you who are thinking of triangular shaped dwellings made of cowhide and wondering how the editors let such an egregious typo slip, the epee is a triangular blade, the heaviest and most similar to the classic dueling sword of the three competitive fencing weapons. It is not quite like the gigantic swords wielded so memorably by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brigitte Nielsen in Red Sonja, but it is no fly-swatter either.

It is a weapon that demands quite a bit of patience and timing. As Campbell explains, "you cannot just rush in with the epee and hope to blow through your opponent. You need to be careful and systematic in planning your attack."

The epee is, to risk offending the foil and saber fans out there, something of a thinking-woman's sword.

And so it makes sense that Campbell is a thinking woman.

Her attachment to the epee has borne lots of competitive fruit. She has thought and fought her way to a third-place finish at the 1996 Women's Epee Under-17 Junior Olympics, a 12th-place finish at the Women's Epee Under-20 Championships, and a sixth place finish at the 2000 NCAA's, good enough to earn her a spot on the All-America second team. She is the epee squad leader at Princeton, one of the anchors of a team that consistently wins Ivy League titles and competes for national titles. And, as if those accolades were not enough, she still has a year left to add to the list.

But Campbell's thinking-woman status is not limited to the runway. She spent half of her junior year in South Africa, studying AIDS policy as part of a Woodrow Wilson School task force, and while there discovered a developing program in neighboring Namibia aimed at harnessing that country's latent economic potential through a more community-based tourism policy. If that sounds complicated, it should. It is Campbell's thesis topic.

Unlike most people, who tend to shy away from complicated issues like moths from darkness, Campbell tries to solve them. Since her freshman year, she has been deeply interested in environmental policy and urban planning, in trying to find ways to get people to understand just how important it is to think in terms of the environment and the future of American communities.

She has yet to find any miraculous solutions, but says, "I'd like to spend the next few years involved in environmental and urban policy in some hands-on way. There are a lot of projects that I think can make a difference and that I want to be a part of."

And, if Campbell has her way, she'll spend those next few years of her dually-thoughtful existence in New York, one of the few places in the country and the world where high-level fencing partners and coaches are accessible.

Though there is no such thing as professional fencing, Campbell plans to continue fencing after college, perhaps even to compete in the Olympics someday. But before Campbell gets there she has one last season of collegiate fencing left. The Tigers have won Ivy League titles the past three seasons, and Campbell certainly does not want to see that streak end.

"At first I was a little nervous about the team since we lost a lot of players from last year. But after we came so close to beating Penn State [last weekend] I feel a lot more comfortable."

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As for Campbell, her goals are pretty simple. She wants to improve on her sixth-place finish at NCAAs sophomore year, so last year, she practiced with a Russian fencer in South Africa while the NCAA's went on a few thousand miles away.

"If you make it into the final group of four in the NCAA's, you then get to compete against the other three fencers in fifteen-touch bouts. I'd really like to make it to that point, and to qualify as a first-team All-American."