When Honor Met Kat: A Conversation About Fencing

During her day at NCS, Kat Holmes sat down for a 1-on-1 conversation about junior fencing with Honor Johnson '22.

Honor took the silver medal in junior women's sabre at February's Junior Olympic Fencing Championships. She is the country's top-ranked 12-year-old in women's sabre, and last month she traveled to Konin, Poland, for her first international tournament, placing 24th in a field of 139.

As a junior fencer, Holmes, who competes in epée, qualified for her first national team at age 15 and won a silver medal at the Cadet World Championships in 2009.

Next week, the two will take part in the October North American Cup in Detroit.

 

Some excerpts from their conversation follow:

 

Holmes: You were just in Poland -- how did that go?

 

Johnson: It was really nice. I got top-32.

 

Holmes: I know! That's super impressive, making top-32 at your first World Cup. My first World Cup was in Germany, and we had five rounds of pools on the first day. I made it through the first day, and I thought I was going to die. I remember I lunged and cramped and got stuck in my lunge, and the ref had to tip me over.

 

***

 

Holmes: One of the things my parents always emphasized was that school came first, and it meant that I had to really prioritize my time. Does NCS still give you a planner?

 

Johnson: Yeah.

 

Holmes: That literally still is my key to everything. I have mine filled out for the next two months with all my assignments and when they're due, and I write in all my tournaments. ... Having a plan of, 'I'm going to school, I need to get these three things done, and then I'm going to go to practice,' is totally how I've made my way through everything. Even now: I know when all my papers are due, I've planned out when I'm going to work out and on what day, and I can do it. I still get overwhelmed, but now it's like I've done it before, I can definitely do it, and it is very doable.

 

***

 

Holmes: What are your favorite subjects in school?

 

Johnson: Math and science.

 

Holmes: Nice! STEM girl, I like it. I think fencing and science really complement each other. Fencing is the chess of sports.

 

Johnson: What was your favorite subject at NCS?

 

Holmes: I always loved science. I want to be a doctor, an orthopedic surgeon, and 7th-grade Human Biology, that was the class that triggered it for me. I loved science all the way. Mr. Moriarty, who teaches physics in 9th grade, was actually my adviser all the way through. Love him. Ms. Clevenger then taught both chemistry and AP chemistry for me. Loved her.

 

***

 

Johnson: Were you really nervous at the Olympics?

 

Holmes: When I was there, there was nothing more I could have done. If I let myself be nervous, I would have been undermining all that work. So I wasn't really nervous, but I was kind of in awe. "Am I really here? Am I supposed to be here?" And then when I started fencing, I was like, "I AM HERE!"

 

***

 

Johnson: When did you start talking to colleges?

 

Holmes: My junior spring. The NCAA has a bunch of rules about when coaches can and can't talk to you. So coaches approached me in my sophomore year to give me school information. In your junior year, College Guidance starts working with you in preparation. They helped me get my grades together and take the SAT so I was already to go by that spring. I contacted the schools I was interested in and said, here are my grades, here's my test scores, run them through admissions. You want a green light, which means admissions says, yes, they are within our academically acceptable range.

 

***

 

Holmes: Who are your favorite women sabre fencers?

 

Johnson: Mariel Zagunis and Ibtihaj Muhammad.

 

Holmes: They're pretty cool. I really like both of them and they work really hard. ... I think they might be taking some time off but I know that they're both planning on coming back, right when you'll be getting ready to start taking some names from the older senior fencers. I'm sure they're going to know who you are.