The third-year anthropology major fences her way to the Junior Olympics.
Jackie Hsiao ’27 took a stab at fencing during a summer camp before she entered eighth grade. She hated it. “It was hot and sweaty, and I didn’t know what I was doing,” the Milford, Connecticut, native says. “All the kids were beating me.”
Reluctantly, she stuck with the sport when school started that fall. Her older brother, Timothy, was on the school team, so Jackie joined to make car pickup easier for her parents. “The environment was so much better than at camp,” she recalls. “The team became my family, and I fell in love with the sport.”
Fencing is a combat sport featuring sword fighting, where competitors try to score points by landing their sword on the opponent’s “target area.” It requires patience, balance, mental toughness, and physical stamina.
Hsiao (pronounced like the first syllable of “shower”) says her skills improved greatly thanks to the coaches at Hopkins School, a college preparatory school in New Haven, Connecticut, and a personal coach. She improved so much that this past February, she was invited to compete at the Fencing Junior Olympics in Charlotte, North Carolina. While she didn’t approach the winner’s circle, it was a major accomplishment for someone whose sporting career was nearly derailed toward the end of her senior year of high school.
Hsiao was leading her opponent by one point in the waning seconds of a state championship match, and the opponent was desperate. “Her coach told her to charge at me, and I tried to back up defensively,” she says. “I planted my right knee at the wrong angle and tore my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament).”
Hsiao won the match but lost nearly a year of competitive fencing. By the time she was cleared to compete, she was a first-year student at URochester, where she majors in anthropology and takes vocal lessons at Eastman. She joined the fencing club, attended practices, and eventually competed for the team. Last spring, Hsiao was elected club president and led a full men’s and women’s team to the United States Association of Collegiate Fencing Clubs Championships in State College, Pennsylvania—a first for the organization.
Hsiao is a student of the game. Her mother records all of her matches so that she can watch them and learn from her mistakes. She’s interested in a career in medical law and believes fencing offers life lessons that have prepared her for the arduous journey ahead. “In fencing, you’ve got to be ready for anything, because every opponent has a different style and mentality.”
While at the Junior Olympics, she met two fencing idols: three-time Olympic women’s foil gold medalist Lee Kiefer and college All-American Maia Chamberlain of Princeton University. This summer, Hsiao competed at the Summer Nationals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Again, she didn’t chase gold, but the experience whetted her appetite for the future.
“Persistence is the key, and losing is one of the best ways to learn,” she says. “My goal is to earn a rating from the United States Fencing Association. To do that, I’ll need to achieve victories in their competitions. I’ve set my mind to it.” Allez!
This story appears in the fall 2025 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the University of Rochester.
