One of the most experienced fencers on Team USA, Paris will be Kat’s third Games. She will contest the épée team event as a replacement athlete, joining a trio of first-time Olympians, including NYAC teammate Anne Cebula. In Rio in 2016, Kat was a member of the US team that placed fifth, after she finished 25th individually. In Tokyo in 2021, she placed 18th in the individual competition and contributed to the USA team that, again, placed fifth.
In addition to her four gold medals – two individual and two team – from the 2015 and 2019 Pan Am Games, Kat was a member of the US team that won the world épée team title in 2018, the first ever world championships medal for a US women’s épée team. That same year, she anchored the US team to its first ever World Cup gold medal.
Prior to the 2016 Olympic Games, Kat took two years off from her studies at Princeton University in order to train. Following those Games, she returned to Princeton, graduating magna cum laude with departmental honors in 2017. While at Princeton, she was the 2017 individual Ivy League champion and team Ive League champion in 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2017. She also competed on the team that, in 2013, won Princeton’s first NCAA fencing championship.
Following the US team’s fifth place finish at the 2016 Olympic Games, Kat decided to develop her senior thesis at Princeton around why the team had fallen short of winning the gold medal. In 2017 she published her conclusions, entitled “How Risk Preference and Perception of Action Riskiness in Fencing Affect Learning and Strategy of Fencing Play.” Her research involved analyzing videos of fencers in order to create a predictive model for results and developing a computer program that simulated common fencing situations. “In the end, I found that fencers actually attack less than what is optimal. I adjusted my approach in one-touch overtimes, and my win percentage went from 60% to 88%.”
Presently, Kat is studying at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City and hopes to graduate in 2025.
Paris Result:
7th place, épée team competition.