Walk past the front desk of the MAC. Take a left through the doors, walk down an office-filled hallway, and go through the imposingly heavy metal entrance. Hike up two flights of steep stairs.
Surrounded by a floor full of large weight lifters and girls addicted to exercise bikes is a long rectangular room steeped in history. Black and white pictures of fencers hang below crimson-colored flags. Alongside them are old helmets and rusting swords in a scene straight out of Camelot, crossed in artistic display.
But electronic strips lying on the floor underscore the fact that fencing isn’t King Arthur’s pastime anymore. Now a highly technical sport, fencing has become increasingly popular, particularly after a stunning U.S. showing at the Summer 2008 Olympics. In Beijing, the American women’s teams performed unexpectedly well, sweeping the individual saber events.
American fencing in Beijing also saw a silver medal in the women’s team foil event—a win that came as a complete surprise to most who follow fencing. Then again, even Harvard students unfamiliar with the sport might have been unsurprised at the win once learning that it belonged to Emily R. Cross ’08-’10, a member of the Harvard fencing team who has long proven her ability to perform under stressful conditions.
BEDKNOBS, BROOMSTICKS AND SWORDS
At the age when most of her classmates were content with kickball, Cross began fencing with her dad, who himself had fenced recreationally at the college level.
“We gave a [fencing] birthday party for her brother, and he didn’t like it, but Emily picked up a broom and started whacking people with it. So we said, ‘Maybe you’re the one who’s really interested,’” remembers Cross’s mother.
To many people’s relief, nine-year-old Emily soon put down the injurious broom and picked up the foil. One of three types of swords in fencing, along with the saber and the epee, the foil has the most specific target; fencers in the event aim solely for the torso, with arms, head and legs remaining out of bounds. Like the epee, only the tip can be used to score points.
It quickly became apparent that for Cross, the sword wasn’t just a toy—and that fencing sessions with her dad would have to become something more.
“Eventually my coach said, ‘You should probably try fencing someone who isn’t your dad,’” says Cross matter-of-factly.
So Cross began to fence people her own age, first in smaller competitions around the tri-state area and then eventually working her way up to national competitions, where initial losses spurred Cross to train harder. “In the beginning, she lost a lot,” says mom Elizabeth K. Cross. “I attribute Emily’s success to losing so much early on.”
More competitions led to more victories—and those led successively to more time commitments, which soon necessitated tough sacrifices.
“She missed out on some things. Going to her prom, she was wearing a sleeveless dress and it looked like she had an abusive father or boyfriend,” Liz says of her daughter’s sword-battered arms.
And the sacrifices took their toll. “I was kind of burned out in my senior year of high school and I just didn’t want to do it, at least on the level that I had been during high school,” Cross says.
FINALS OR FOIL
But while Cross was having her doubts about fencing beyond high school, colleges were sure they wanted Cross to continue the sport.
“I’d seen her fence since she was about 12 years old,” says Peter A. Brand, the head coach of Harvard’s fencing team. Brand knew he wanted to recruit her, just as he had successfully recruited her brother, Samuel R. Cross ’07.
Harvard wasn’t the only school eyeing Cross—in addition to her acceptance to Harvard, Cross was given a full scholarship to Stanford, plus $10,000 of World Cup travel money, a package that amounted to approximately $50,000 a year. In the end, though, the chance to be with her brother won out and Cross found herself in Cambridge in the fall of 2004.
Though Cross felt burnt out, she began her career at Harvard ready to fence. “The minute she walked in here, there was an immediate recognition on my part that this person is going places,” Brand says.
It may have been a show at first, but eventually the fencing team allowed Cross to overcome her reluctance to continue fencing. “Fencing in college really helped me get back the love for the sport, just because it’s a different environment,” she says. “The format is much more supportive—you don’t have to travel as much, and you get to spend time with people on the team.”
Cross soon found herself at home with the fencing team, whose older members advised the biology concentrator about which classes to take, and “which final clubs are cool to go to,” Cross recalls.
But as much as Cross loved the fencing team, it was growing increasingly difficult to maintain her rising international ranking amid the rigors of pre-med classes. Along with the daily practices and twice-weekly lifting sessions that face all Harvard fencers, Cross was also traveling to compete around the world. And just as in high school, she found herself making sacrifices: for instance, she was forced to skip a competition when her Chemistry 17: “Principles of Organic Chemistry” professor wouldn’t let her reschedule a midterm.
So Cross faced a tough decision. NCAA rules allow fencers to play for a total of four years. However, Cross realized that in order to train to the degree necessary to qualify for the Olympics, she would need to take off an entire year and a half—which would only allow her to compete at Harvard for a total of three years. But despite the drop in playing time with the fencing team, she received full support from her teammates and coach.
“She felt compelled to take the year off. And I basically pushed her to do it,” Brand says. “There was no doubt in my mind that this person will make the Olympic team.”
So Cross set out for New York, where biology classes were replaced by daily fencing workouts and visits to her physical therapist, who worked on her problem ankle.
That Christmas break, before setting out to Europe to participate in qualifying tournaments for Beijing, Cross received devastating news—brother Sam was diagnosed with leukemia.
“In some ways it helped me to have something else to do that didn’t require too much thought,” Cross says slowly, picking her words carefully. With Sam’s encouragement, she decided to keep her travel plans for Europe and just a few short months later, secured her spot on the U.S. Olympic team.
BEIJING WELCOMES YOU
When she arrived at the Games, Cross found herself facing an opponent with the home-team advantage. On top of her Olympic nerves, Cross was matched with a Chinese competitor in her first round, who was supported by legions of cheering fans packed into the small venue.
“The spectators didn’t really know the rules, they cheered whenever anything happened—even when it was my point. I could barely hear myself think. Every nervous impulse I had was magnified eight million times,” Cross says. “It would’ve been nice to fence someone who wasn’t Chinese.”
While Cross finished disappointingly in the individual event, Brand, watching at home with his two sons, felt confident that she would bounce back. “Her disappointments usually turn into big wins,” he says. “Losing was not such a terrible thing.”
He was right. Cross came back with a vengeance in the team event. She fenced in between the other two players—forcing her to remain on the sidelines during the critical final moments.
“I probably almost had a heart attack 50 times in the bout,” Cross says of the final round. “I was just glad I didn’t have to fence it.”
Like all Olympic heroes, Cross got her fair share of accolades: throwing out pitches at Fenway, appearing on Oprah and receiving a crystal apple from New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who got his MBA at Harvard Business School.
But while Cross talks excitedly about encounters with fellow athletes (“At one point, Kobe was walking through the village, and my friend and I were there, and he said, ‘What up’ and I thought that was pretty cool,” she says excitedly), she has readjusted quickly to the normal Harvard routine.
“It’s been great,” she says calmly, sipping on boba tea. “It’s nice to have someone setting out a schedule and giving me assignments to do.”
A relaxed orgo student is a rarity at Harvard. But then, so are pre-med Olympians.
