Packer Collegiate Institute alum wins gold at Paris Olympics
She also received a silver medal.
United States' Lauren Scruggs celebrates after winning the women's team foil final match against Italy during the 2024 Summer Olympics at the Grand Palais, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024, in Paris, France. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell
No fencing coach — no problem.
No fencing team — all good.
The Packer Collegiate Institute on Joralemon Street in Brooklyn Heights lacked both. But that didn’t stop Lauren Scruggs from winning a gold and silver medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Scruggs — a Packer grad who enters her senior year at Harvard this fall — and her teammates, Lee Kiefer, Jackie Dubrovich and Maia Weintraub, secured a gold medal for Team USA in the Women’s Foil Team event. It was Scruggs’ second medal at the Paris Olympics, as she also earned a silver medal in the Women’s Foil Individual event.
It marked the first-time in history that the United States has won an Olympic gold medal in the women’s foil fencing event since that competition began back in 1904.
With no fencing team at Packer, how did Scruggs get attracted to the sport?
“I got into fencing through my brother Nolen,” she told GLAAD’s Allison Bloom. “He was super into Star Wars and wanted to sword-fight.” Scruggs also credits her mother’s encouragement to stick with fencing after she had paid for the equipment, according to Olympic Media Center reports.
Her brother, Nolen Scruggs, fenced at Columbia.
Little did she know what was to come. She claims she had zero expectations entering her first Olympic Games.
“I thought I was going to lose my first bout, so to get a medal is just incredible,” she told Corbin McGuire, from the Olympic Media Center, with a silver medal hanging from her neck.
Scruggs entered the Olympic record book by becoming the first Black woman to win an Olympic fencing medal.
“Fencing has largely, historically been a non-Black sport,” Scruggs told McGuire. “So, I hope to inspire young Black girls to get into fencing and to think they can have a place in the sport. I just hope that more people who look like me, little girls like me, feel they have a place in the sport.”
Her commitment was serious, and it showed. She won the 2019 and 2022 Junior World Fencing Championships in foil and the 2023 NCAA title.
An All-American in all three years at Harvard, Scruggs arrived at the Olympics with a wealth of experience and determination, she told the Olympic Media. She also praised the impact that Harvard’s program — run by former NCAA standout Daria Schneider — has had on her.
She added that she was also grateful for her New York City upbringing, which instilled in her the confidence and toughness required to succeed at the highest levels of competition.
“Packer is thrilled and proud to celebrate our alum Lauren Scruggs, Class of 2021, and her history-making run in the summer Olympics – becoming the first Black American woman to win an individual Olympic fencing medal; and helping the U.S. secure gold in the Women’s Fencing Team Foil competition,” Anne Conway, Packer’s communication director, wrote in an e-mail to the Brooklyn Eagle.
Conway added: “Here at Packer we are not all surprised that Lauren continues to excel, and we have been excitedly celebrating her Olympic journey since the spring. Our talented Upper School student journalists led the way with a profile in our student newspaper, where one former teacher told the author, ‘Lauren was probably more on top of her work than some people with perfect attendance in high school. She would fly in from halfway across the world and still have done the reading that was due that morning. It was amazing.’”
Lauren was invited back to Packer for a spring visit, Conway said. “She had a Q & A with some Lower School students to discuss her road to the Olympics.”
And an e-mail from a happy Larissa Degas arrived from Norway, of all places. “I was Lauren’s dean at Packer and knew her all through high school. I also taught her in two English classes.”
Scruggs told GLAAD she is excited for her next chapter. “Right now, I’m just focused on finishing my last year of college and hopefully graduating with a job.”
Perhaps she will be the first fencing coach at the Packer Collegiate Institute.
Andy Furman is a Fox Sports Radio national talk show host. Previously, he was a scholastic sports columnist for the Brooklyn Eagle. He may be reached at: [email protected]; Twitter: @AndyFurmanFSR.
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