A Lunge Toward Victory

For first-year student Katerina Lung, school is not just about classes and clubs, but also traveling the world and competing as one of the world’s top fencers in her age group. A member of the Columbia fencing team, Lung is currently ranked sixth in the FIE junior rankings and recently won the Bronze Medal at the FIE International Fencing Federation World Cup in Istanbul, Turkey, and was a member of the silver-winning Team USA. She just returned from the 2025 November North American Cup in Fort Worth, Texas, where she placed second. 

Lung’s interest in fencing began at the early age of six. Soon it would become a passion. 

“I was at a Chinese school, and they offered this after-school program,’ she remembers. “So I was like, oh, I'll just try this out. And I eventually just joined the club because I really liked it, and ever since then, I just kept fencing.”

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She played in a fencing club during her high-school years at Lexington High School in the greater Boston area, where she racked up medals, earning silver at the 2025 Senior World Cup in Cairo, Egypt, in March, and played on the gold-winning USA team at the 2025 Junior World Championships last April in Wuxi, China. High school is also where Lung started competing with the Moe Fencing Club.

Her interest in biology, robotics, and computer science led her to investigate biomedical engineering at Columbia (she also holds a patent for an automated system to assess plant health). This past fall, she also enjoyed her physics and University Writing class. Lung manages to combine her training and competition schedule with a challenging curriculum, a balancing act she has maintained for some time. 

“I gained a lot of skills in high school,” says Lung, who estimates that she missed 64 school days for fencing during her senior year. “While I'm traveling, I try to catch up on all my work, while flying or in the lounge. The days I'm competing, I’m not able to study, obviously. But when I come back–after the competition, before the competition–I try my best to catch up on all my work.”

When not fencing or studying, Lung also enjoys reading, writing, painting, and making digital art. She has big plans for the future, including upcoming tournaments in Slovakia and South Korea, and aspires to compete at the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. 

“I'm trying to make the world team this year. So it's like the top four fencers get to go to World Championships,” she says. “So I'm looking forward to these competitions, trying to get my ranking back up, and hopefully I get to qualify for this one.”

Lead Photo Caption: First-year student Katerina Lung (right) competes at the 2025 November North American Cup in Fort Worth, Texas.
Lead Photo Credit: Katerina Lung