In the quiet hours a day before the ACC Fencing Championships, before scores of supporters would turn out en masse to see an coming-of-age tour de force from the women’s team writ large and its local prodigy, Notre Dame fencing coach Gia Kvaratskhelia and burgeoning sophomore star foilist JoJo Conway unfolded an championship foundation.
At Kvaratskhelia’s prodding, Conway pierced the surface of her passion for the sport in a Friday session.
She screamed. She yelled. She worked.
And as the next 48 hours unfolded inside Notre Dame’s Joyce Center, Conway uncorked a superlative performance that helped lift ND to a sudden-death overtime victory for the ACC’s women’s fencing championship – the program’s third-straight crown — and saw the indomitable Conway emerge as unquestioned Women’s Most Valuable Fencer.
“I remember being quite nervous, actually,” said Conway, a Mishawaka, Indiana, native and John Adams High School graduate. “I talked to Gia about it on Friday, and I’d said I was kind of nervous. We had a really intense private lesson that day, and I felt a little bit better. I was nervous, but I wanted to give it my all no matter what and I’d be fine.
“It was more so a mentally intense rather than physically intense lesson. Basically during competitions, we scream if we score a point; Gia wanted me to recreate that during the lesson, so to recreate the scream as if I was in the midst of super-intense competition. It honestly was one of the hardest things; it took me four or five times until I actually produced the same intense scream.”
Yet, with the team’s overall ACC crown and her own ACC MVP performance, Conway derives belief in the evidentiary process.
“I think it gave me the confidence that even when things are difficult or a bout is not going my way,” Conway said, “so many factors you can’t control and even if things are difficult during a bout, I can still pull through.
“I think consistency is important for training for me and how I set myself up for success, so even when it kind of hurts or I don’t want to, I still go in and get something done.”
And so it is Tuesday, that ACC Championship masterpiece scarcely 48 hours in the rearview, and Kvaratskhelia sees a familiar sight: Conway and her teammates are back to work, honing skills, studying nuances in their approach and, most importantly, continuing their quest for a national championship with the NCAA Fencing Championships to unfold later this month.
“Guess what? JoJo showed up and had a training session and went back to normal,” Kvaratskhelia said of the response to the conference crown.
“I think it’s a reflection of everything else in her life, her daily behavior, the way she handles school; she traveled 9 out of 11 weekends in one stretch, five of them international travels to include Wednesday departure and a Monday return to campus. Yet she has a really high GPA, around 3.7. Handling that kind of stress and being able to manage both speaks of her emotional stability and that’s reflected in her fencing.
“We knew she was really talented, superbly talented, but she just picks up information a lot quicker than many athletes and retains the information and excels. It’s the combination of all of those that really culminates in her performance.”
What Kvaratskhelia gleans from the Fighting Irish women’s fencing team’s ACC title barrage lends optimism that Notre Dame can further burnish its bona fides as collegiate fencing’s consummate program without peer.
There already are five NCAA team fencing championships; the current run comprises a suffocating three-peat.
With its handling of the rigors of the day-long ACC individuals and the sudden-death overtime bouts for the team crown, Notre Dame is tracking for more postseason excellence.