U.S. women’s fencing team wins gold at Paris Olympics

August 5, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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PARIS — THE U.S. WOMEN’S foil fencing team on Thursday won the country’s first-ever team gold medal in fencing at the Paris Olympics, after the historic first- and second-place finishes in the women’s foil individual event earlier in the week by Lee Kiefer and Lauren Scruggs, a Queens native, Harvard student and Packer Collegiate Institute alumna. Scruggs scored the final three points for the U.S. in the competition, beating the Italian team, reports the New York Post. She is the first American Black woman to win a medal in individual fencing.

“I’ve grown up in New York my whole life. It can be kind of rough sometimes. You develop a hard shell, and in terms of how that translates to my fencing, I think it came out, that energy and that toughness,” Scruggs told Reuters. The U.S. women’s epee team, including fellow New Yorker and Brooklyn Tech grad Anne Cebula, came in seventh in their event.

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