For second-year epee fencer Kateryna Chorniy (Kyiv, Ukraine), fencing has always been a family affair. With her grandfather coaching saber and her mother formerly fencing in foil, it was an easy choice for Chorniy to begin fencing 10 years ago. After trying a few other sports, Chorniy saw that naturally she enjoyed fencing the most and saw that she was progressing well with her skills.
Within a few years, as young as age 12, she knew she wanted to pursue fencing at a competitive level and was even thinking about a future professional career. After connecting with her coach in Ukraine, Chorniy knew she would be on the right track to continue fencing and progress as an athlete.
"He's really famous and has a lot of good students so I knew that if I worked with him I could reach some level of success," Chorniy said.
Chorniy continued to fence throughout high school, thinking at the time she would end up at a college in Ukraine. After putting in applications for colleges in her home country with goals to pursue being a fencing coach, she came to a fencing camp in New York where a coach explained the opportunities available in the United States. From there, Chorniy decided to take a leap of faith and shift gears to come to Penn State.
"I took a gap year and thought why not go?" Chorniy said. "I knew that Penn State was a really good school and that the fencing program was super strong so it was an obvious choice."
After a year of quiet campus life as a freshman in the era of COVID-19, Chorniy said the highlight of her freshman year on the team was witnessing NCAAs and getting to be together with her whole team for the event. This year, she says, has been a change of pace and that she has appreciated being able to see friends and connect with professors in-person. With a year of preparation, she's also excited to compete more this year and see how competitions pan out.
"I'm expecting a lot from this season because there's going to be many more competitions," Chorniy said. "As a team, we got stronger over the year so I'm excited for the possibilities."
Moving into this season, Chorniy hopes to continue to perform well in every competition, but her biggest goal overall is to qualify, compete in, and win NCAAs this year, both for the team and individually.
"Inside this big goal, there are smaller goals that lead to the big one so the smaller goals are to continue to get better every meet so the moment we get to NCAAs we'll be ready to shine." Chorniy said.
Looking back on her Penn State journey so far, Chorniy says it's the people she's met who have made the biggest impact on her.
"I met people here who I never expected to be so close to," Chorniy said. "It was really unexpected to meet so many nice people that became my really good friends."
With competitions heating up, Chorniy feels prepared to take on the rest of the rest of the season, all with her friends, family, and teammates by her side.