Founded in 2021 by PJ Loranger ’24, Gleb Syomichev ’23, Max Pieterbarg ’24 and Anna Pan ’22, the fencing club set out with the goal of making it a varsity sport. Three years later, they have achieved their goal.
“Generally speaking, you have to be a club for three years, and you have to show that you can maintain your club,” Athletic Director VJ Sarullo said. “The coach and I met a few times and there’s a lot of logistics that we worked on regarding the transition that will happen from a club to the varsity sport. Then we were ready to go.”
The new fencing coach is Delphine DeVore: a former fencer at Columbia University, Junior Olympic Champion, Pan American Junior Champion and the 2024 Division I National Champion in Women’s Foil.
“We were a club, there weren’t enough people for it to be varsity sport,” Co-Captain Aiden Goldenberg ’25 said. “We had problems, in the beginning, finding a coach, but now we have an established coach who runs this program.”
As a club they faced several significant challenges, including securing fenceable practice space, obtaining funding for necessary equipment and arranging transportation to competitions.
“Our biggest challenge is the space we’re in, because being in the cafeteria didn’t have a lot of space, and the floors were really slippery,” Goldenberg said. “We didn’t have any funding at the time, so we were at a serious disadvantage for resources, but, through coaching, we were on top.”
Despite these challenges, the team dominated the Connecticut State Fencing Championships, winning in both 2022 and 2023, and coming second in 2024. Pieterbarg’s victory in the 2024 State Individual Fencing Championships further strengthened their reputation, ultimately helping solidify their case for varsity status.
“Now that we’ve gone through a couple of competitions, and won first place at State’s the first two years of our club, we have a lot of merit to our name,” Co-Captain Alessandro Alderucci ’25 said. “We have a lot of value as a club and now a team, and I think that’s worthy of recognition as a varsity sport.
Achieving varsity status gives them a lot more opportunities in terms of competing against other varsity programs and becoming more visible in Fairfield country and across Connecticut. It also paves the way for them to create an even greater legacy.
“Fencing is a great opportunity,” Alderucci said. “If fencing is really something that you want to get into, then listening to people who are more experienced and also showing up consistently with a good attitude conditions you to become a better athlete in general.”
This year, the captains are focusing on training new members and getting a state championship victory with a new competing roster. For future years they hope to have a fleshed out JV team as well as varsity.
“I think the ideal scenario for all of our [Staples] teams is that we have a junior varsity level,” Sarullo said. “That way, we can develop student athletes’ skills and then eventually those kids will progress and compete at the varsity level.”
