Ivy League Sports

In 1972, when three fencers -- two from Cornell and one representing Barnard -- became the Ivy League’s first known women All-Americans, they followed in a long tradition of women’s participation in the sport. Women had been involved in New York City fencing clubs since the Civil War, and in the late 19th and 20th centuries, fencing remained one of the few athletic activities open to women. A women’s individual fencing event was introduced in the 1924 Olympic Games, and fencing was added as a team event in 1960. Ivy League schools’ participation in women’s fencing competitions began with the founding of the Intercollegiate Women’s Fencing Association in 1929 by four colleges, including Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania. As the competition expanded over the next decades, and the association added the word “national” to its name, thus becoming the NIWFA, Cornell won championships in 1930, 1967-69, and 1972-73.

Peggy Walbridge was a key member of the Cornell teams in the 1970s, a three-time All-American as a sophomore, junior, and senior who won the individual national championship in 1974. Yet in high school, where she had competed in volleyball and basketball, she had learned only the basics of fencing in noncompetitive group drills. At Cornell, Walbridge started playing basketball as a freshman but, discouraged by the minimal expectations expressed by the coach at the time, instead began to focus on fencing. In that sport, she says, the women were getting “really superb” training five days a week in practice with the men’s team. “I was awful the first year, certifiably awful,” she recalls. Yet she stuck with it because “it was incredibly hard work and I enjoyed it.”

Walbridge is now assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell, and considers fencing key to her success in life: Fencing is a tremendously disciplined sport. [You learn] that if you work at something over the long term and you start out terrible, ... you will start doing it better. . . . Doing something well is a positive thing. There is something really wonderful about being really competent in something and being very good. Trying to find other ways in your life that you can be that good is always a challenge.