After watching the movie The Princess Bride, at the age of nine, Nicole Ross signed up for her first fencing class, picked up her first foil, and the rest is history. A native of the Upper West Side in Manhattan, Ross stayed in her backyard to help Columbia’s fencing program remain among the most dominant in the country and became a collegiate and national star.
Ross is just the second woman to achieve All-America status three times with the Lions, highlighted by a 2010 individual NCAA Women’s Foil Championship.
As a first-year, Ross boasted a 44-5 record, was a first-team All-Ivy League selection and took third place at the NCAA Championships to pick up her first All-America nod. Ross followed that up with a solid sophomore campaign that saw her win gold at the IFA Championships, secure another first-team All-Ivy League nod and go 19-5 at the 2009 NCAA Championships for second-team All-America honors.
Ross was nearly unstoppable as a senior in 2009-10, racking up 65 regular season bout victories and winning the NCAA Northeast Regional crown to set the stage for one of the most dominant individual performances in recent NCAA Championship history.
Ross went 21-2 in the preliminary rounds and had no trouble moving on to the championship round after a 15-8 victory in the semifinals, where she faced two-time defending foil champ Doris Willette from Penn State. Fans were awaiting a bout that would come down to one or two touches, but Ross impressively earned a 15-9 decision to become the first Lion woman to win the NCAA foil title in 20 years.
On the international scene, Ross was a member of the first U.S. Women’s Foil Team to win a Junior World Championship title in 2009. She went on to qualify for her first Olympic Team at the 2012 London Games and helped lead the team to three straight medals at the Senior World Championships from 2017-2019, including the team’s first-ever Senior World title in 2018. In 2021, she recovered from a torn ACL to make her second Olympic appearance with the U.S. in Tokyo.
