Back to School for Fencing Champ

(New York, N.Y.) – As a 15-year-old school girl, Nzingha Prescod faced the ultimate test.

In the semifinals of a World Cup foil fencing event in Las Vegas, Nevada, she faced one of the most decorated swordswomen in the world. Valentina Vezzali of Italy had won the past two Olympic gold medals, in 2000 and 2004, and a record 60 World Cup tournaments. At 34, the Italian was nearly two decades older than Prescod, who had just finished her sophomore year at the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan.

“She didn’t know who I was,” Prescod said.

In order to be the first one to score 15 points, “I was doing whatever,” Prescod said casually, “trying to do things that might work.”

With about 45 seconds remaining, it was 12-11, Vezzali’s lead.   

“I think I was definitely frustrating her,” Prescod said. “During the break, she was yelling at her coach.”

In the final seconds, however, Prescod rushed a bit and Vezzali scored the next three points to win.

“She didn’t say anything [to me] afterward,” Prescod recalled. Yet the teenager’s third-place finish made a statement.

“Everyone was in awe of Nzingha’s performance,” said Erinn Smart, a two-time US Olympian who had also competed at that Las Vegas World Cup, in June 2008.

“People still remember it,” Prescod said, more than two years later.

Since then, Vezzali won her third consecutive Olympic gold medal in the individual foil event in Beijing. And Prescod went on to win her second consecutive Cadet World Championship title – the only American ever to win back-to-back foil titles in the under-17 division.

Now, Prescod is at a juncture and so is the US women’s foil fencing team. After the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the three Americans who captured a silver medal in the team event have retired so it’s up to the younger generation to find a way to continue the legacy.

Prescod hopes to emerge as a leader but individually, she is also trying to live up to her own precedent of winning as she advances into the older age divisions and enters college.

She was already forced to vacate her cadet world titles last year as she moved into the junior (under-20) ranks. This season, at 18, she will compete in both junior and senior tournaments internationally, while adding collegiate fencing as a freshman at Columbia University.

“It’s a tough transition, aging up to the senior level. You put a lot of pressure on yourself,” said Smart who came up through the same fencing program as Prescod, graduated from Barnard College in 2002, and was one of the 2008 Olympic silver medalists.

Last season, Prescod made her first transition out of cadets and said, “I felt like I had a slump.”

For Prescod, “a slump” meant three runner-up finishes and one third-place result in the junior World Cup series, 12^th place at the junior world championships in Baku, Azerbaijan, and 25^th at her senior world championship debut in Antalya, Turkey.

“I was always confused. I wasn’t focused,” she explained. “I was mostly worried about my performance. In May and June, things picked up, though. It could have been worse.”

Even if Prescod didn’t match her expectations, she secured an undisputed place on the US team for the 2010 senior world championships in Paris, France, November 4-13.

By then, Prescod will be two months into her college career and will have already moved out of her childhood home in Brooklyn, N.Y., that she shared with her mother Marva (an attorney) and older sister Tekeya (a junior at Brooklyn College).

Nzingha said she planned to keep working with her long-time coach Buckie Leach, but it remained to be seen how she would manage to mesh a double schedule.

The 2011 Ivy League Championships, for example, will coincide with the first World Cup of the season in Germany.

“I’m not sure what I’ll do,” Prescod said over lunch last week.

Whether she is fencing the best woman in the world or facing the top collegiate fencer, six-time Olympian Peter Westbrook says Prescod has a great ability to stay calm and has never seen her paralyzed by a fear of losing.

The latter, Westbrook said, “Is an unbelievable quality. I like to see that in a top athlete because sometimes fear takes you from going higher.”

Westbrook has seen the entire arc of Prescod’s career and is watching to see how she handles her new status.

One thing he’s hoping is that she grows a bit tougher when fighting a teammate or a friend.

“Sometimes, she’s too nice,” said Westbrook, a 1984 Olympic bronze medalist in sabre. “She still wins, but she can win more if she didn’t have so much compassion for her opponent. At the 2010 nationals [where she earned a bronze medal], there were clearly a couple of bad calls. If it’s a bad call on the other person, she’ll say, ‘Throw it out.’ If the situation was reversed, the other person wouldn’t say it’s a bad call.”

But that’s “Zingy.”

From her first lessons at Westbrook’s New York club, he said, “Zingy was there all the time, always smiling, laughing, so glad to be there, and so happy to encourage people.”

“She was definitely one that stuck out, talent-wise,” added Smart, who was an early mentor. ”Her hands and feet are definitely quick. And a lot of actions – the hits, the blocks – come very naturally and quickly to her.”

Unlike epee and sabre athletes, foil fencers are limited to scoring on their opponent’s torso (excluding the arms and head).

“With foil, it takes a lot of precision compared to other weapons because the target is smaller and you hit with the point,” Smart said. “It’s like calligraphy versus writing with a magic marker. A lot of it comes down to what you’re doing with your thumb and index finger.”

It can be hard to appreciate that because it’s so hard to see. The foil’s grip covers the fingers and Prescod wears a glove on her weapon-wielding hand. So during lunch last week in midtown Manhattan, Prescod was asked to demonstrate the finger movements that make her so successful.

Reaching forward over a basket of tortilla chips, she flashed blue fingernail polish and executed the subtle movements that allow her to exert such great control over her blade. To the average observer, it looked more like she was trying to tune an old-school radio dial.

Much more evident was Prescod’s love for the sport – a trait that Westbrook and Smart noticed immediately.

“It was how committed, how often she was coming in,” Smart said. “Nzingha’s always been a very hard worker. She’s fencing more than the average kids her age. That work ethic translates to her competition results.”

Prescod had many athletic options, however.

When Nzingha was 1, she learned to swim, followed by lessons in karate, gymnastics, tennis, and dancing – all by age 8. Fencing was one of the last sports added to the list. When she was 9, her mother, Marva, read an article in the New York Daily News about Harlem youths training to become Olympic hopefuls with the help of the Peter Westbrook Foundation.

“I thought, ‘Ah nice. My daughters can do it, too. Why not?’” said Mrs. Prescod, who grew up on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent where her own athletic pursuits were limited to field days in school.

“I wasn’t very good at first,” Nzingha said. But she was highly motivated. 

“My sister would always beat me, and I didn’t like to lose,” she said. “I kept practicing so I could beat my sister, and I started to love it more and more.”

Since then, Prescod has amassed a collection of awards ranging from a sculpted glass trophy (her favorite) to a mountain bike.

The bike took a year to transport from Germany to New York City – and she still hasn’t assembled it.

Priority, instead, has gone to graduating from high school, training 18-20 hours a week, competing internationally, and – most recently – working a summer internship at Empire State Development, an agency that promotes economic growth in New York. So when Prescod has a free afternoon, as she did last week, she said what she really wanted to do was, “go home, lie on the ground, turn on the TV – but don’t watch it – and just lay there. That’s my favorite thing to do.”

And with that, she grinned broadly, exposing a full set of braces. Soon, the bill came, the interview ended, and she walked out into the blazing urban heat, looking cool in a white dress and sandals just three days after her 18^th birthday. Unknown by the masses but now recognized by to the top fencer in the world, Zingy jumped on a subway that would carry her back to Brooklyn where she could stare at the ceiling and ponder her dreams.

Aimee Berg is a freelance contributor for teamusa.org. This story was not subject to the approval of the United States Olympic Committee or any National Governing Bodies.