Former fencer Stacey Johnson can add another accomplishment to her lengthy list of impressive feats in the sports world.
Johnson, who is also the Valencia president of the East and Winter Park campuses, will be inducted into the Academic All-America Hall of Fame Sunday at the Marriott World Center in Orlando during the College Sports Information Directors of America annual convention.
She broke barriers as an athlete at San Jose State, leading the school to multiple national championships. She also was the first woman president to hold a four-year term for U.S.A Fencing’s National Governing Body from 2000-04.
Johnson talked with the Orlando Sentinel about her achievements and being one of four women earning the Academic All-America Hall of Fame honor.
Question: How did your dad’s career [in the Air Force and as a former jazz musician] impact your level of interest in fencing? Was there a connection?
Answer: “There was a connection. … As a child I really wanted to be good at something and that was probably from watching my father. So I started fencing and the experience I had with fencing was kind of unusual in that the fencing master, who was French, Jean Gerard Poujardieu started giving me lessons and he said after about three months, ‘You’re terrible. You couldn’t be any worse if I put it in your left hand.’ He put it in my left hand and I just snapped. What I realized was in my Catholic school upbringing they encouraged me to write with my right hand, but I think I really probably was ambidextrous or a leftie. It just kind of unlocked my brain, this whole experience. I started to become very good, very quickly after he put it in my left hand. I made my first team when I was 16 years old and I realized that I had a real possibility to maybe do something with this and certainly get a scholarship to college because at that time, if you recall, it was the beginnings of Title IX.”
Q: How much did Title IX impact your journey?
A: “Huge. Without Title IX, I could not have afforded college especially after my parents divorced. My mom had primary custody of taking care of three kids and working and she went to a community college and got a nursing license. So I had an early connection with community college as well, but I went to San Jose State and was one of the first of about 200 women in the state of California to get the first Title IX scholarships there. It had a great impact on my ability to go to school but we had to perform. We were lucky in that all four years we won the championships and so that was very helpful.”
Q: Were there a lot of women in the sport of fencing at that time?
A: “One of the things I mentioned was that there are three disciplines: foil, epee and saber. And men could fence all three and women were only allowed to fence one. By 1996 in the Atlanta games, epee was brought into the Olympic program and I was the vice president for USA Fencing at that time. In 2000 to 2004, I was president and I’d led a very tough battle to get women on the program, but we succeeded in Athens and then our women won gold and bronze medals; Mariel Zagunis, who is still competing today and is widely known and Sada Jacobson won the bronze.”
Q: What was the challenge regarding the battle for women’s fencing?
A: “The challenge was … and you know women are still fighting this today within many sports governance structures … but men did not want to allow access particularly to saber. Saber historically in the development of the sport was viewed as the weapon that the calvary used on horseback. And who rode the horses? The officers. So it was the leadership. Within the governance structure, many of the leaders were saber fences and they really believed this was the man’s weapon. I actually had the president of Hungary write me a letter at the time saying women were too immature in the sport and weren’t ready to do this. … So it was a very tough battle to get it through. We only won by a margin of seven votes.
Q: What do you want your legacy to be?
A: “I don’t like to think of it in those terms as ‘my legacy’ because everything we do here is done with a team. I have an incredible team at Valencia College, I work with an incredible senior team under the direction of Dr. Sandy Shugart, who is our president and everything is done in a team. There is no one person’s legacy. I would like to believe that I’m helping to leave East campus and Winter Park campuses and Valencia a better place and if that happens, that would be great. Also, I would hope to do that within the sport that I serve, fencing.”
sgreen@orlandosentinel.com. Follow her on twitter @osknights and for more UCF Knights coverage, like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/osUCFKnights/
