Senior Arthur Andreev balances fencing with academics, traveling and training to achieve his goals, with plans to continue fencing during his college years.

While Andreev credited his parents with his reasoning for beginning to fence, he continues the sport because of his passion and success.

“It [fencing] is what I love to do,” Andreev said. 

Andreev said the most important accomplishment of his fencing career was earning his A rating, the top classification in fencing.

“It was years of work, training five plus days a week,” Andreev said.

Andreev faces the challenge of balancing school with four to five hours of practice and travel time four school days a week. 

Because he loves the sport so much and has committed so much time to it, Andreev plans to continue fencing throughout college. 

Andreev has been impacted by the sport, and offered up advice to other athletes.

“[The fencing experiences have taught] persistence,” Andreev said. “If you don’t understand something, looking back, you learn from your mistakes. And I guess you do the same thing in life; you don’t want to treat everything like it’s the worst thing that ever happened… you go back, look at it, and then you improve instead of just getting frustrated for failing.”