Proud: Chapters 11–13

My stipend was a predetermined amount of money—based on world ranking—to defray the cost of training expenses.

Since I lived with my parents, my training stipend—which turned out to be almost the same amount as my teaching salary—would be just enough to subsidize the costs of my personal trainer, gym membership, massage therapist, fencing equipment, and countless other expenses associated with staying in peak physical condition.

I might have bought into their belief that I was too old, not strong enough, or lacked the requisite talent.

Every season culminated with World Championships, unless it was an Olympic year.

Dagmara Wozniak, a Polish immigrant to the United States, with mousy brown hair and a sturdy frame, had been fencing since she was nine years old and had been the alternate on the women’s saber team at the 2008 Olympics and been on Team USA since then.

Coach Korfanty had had an illustrious fencing career in his native Poland before immigrating to the United States and starting a career in coaching in Portland, Oregon.

The excitement of being in Paris and competing at this high level was intoxicating.

If I could provide a vision of hope for these girls, hope that would help them craft their aspirations, manifest their dreams, and demonstrate that wearing hijab didn’t mean limited opportunities, then I was fully on board.

It wasn’t easy to always be the one making the overtures of friendship, since I was, after all, the new member on the team.

I spent the rest of my first year on the national team progressing as an athlete as I worked to climb the rankings, but socially, despite my best efforts, my attempts to bond with my teammates were consistently met with resistance deserving only of a pariah.

In general, it seemed my teammates and the coaching staff had a very superficial idea of who I was as a fencer and a person.

The stereotyping and bias was incredibly exasperating, not to mention disheartening.

When I fenced with Mariel and Dagmara they were formidable opponents, but they didn’t have anything I didn’t have.

The mental game plays such a pivotal role in fencing, and on that day, my mental game had been off.

Not only did she know the intricacies of the sport and all of its rules, but she knew me and all of my idiosyncrasies as well.

She was becoming my closest confidante and I depended on her more and more to help me ride through the ups and down of being a member of Team USA.

I forced myself into a longer warm-up routine than normal, including some basic calisthenics and my usual stretching routine, but I couldn’t shake the fatigue I was feeling.

One day soon after the 2012 London Summer Games had actually transpired, I was out shopping with my friend Habiba in a department store at the shopping mall.

I had an important keynote scheduled at an Islamic conference in Chicago, so I was happy to find some modest options tucked in the racks of elegant dresses.

While I was driving, I replayed the events that had just transpired in the store and the visceral reaction I’d had in my gut.

To do the same thing and expect a different result is the definition of crazy, so I knew everything in my training regimen had to be fine-tuned, altered, and adjusted to get me where I wanted to be.

I knew I needed to find people who could help me make the Olympic team, so I started building a cadre of trainers who could help me formulate a plan, a training schedule, and a mind-set that would take me to the top.

Officially, he was still my personal coach at the foundation, but his work ethic and interest in pushing our training to the next level had slowly dissipated.

“If you can commit to doing these drills, you will be building your craft exponentially and getting ahead of the competition,” he said. “Trust me. It will work.”

Keeth had parlayed his skills and work ethic from fencing into an MBA from Columbia University and a job in the financial sector.

Thankfully, Keeth laughed, too. “Who knew you have a funny side under all that bravado.”

Unfortunately for me and Eliza, her befriending me meant being iced out by Mariel and Dagmara, so her entrance onto the team did nothing to quell my discomfort.

In that short window between eleven p.m. and four a.m., instead of getting good rest, I would spend my time drinking copious amounts of water to make sure I didn’t become dehydrated during practice.

I didn’t feel comfortable defending myself because I didn’t want to perpetuate the stereotype of being an angry Black woman.

I was miserable much of the time. I was in physical pain after almost every workout. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried that I hadn’t trained hard enough. All of that coupled with my teammates and coaching staff who made no effort to mask their disdain for me.

I loved her positive outlook on life; she always had a smile on her face.

Somehow no one figured it important to tell me the time of a mandatory team practice Ed had scheduled. Then I was chastised when I arrived one hour late.

I had gotten so used to being treated like a second-class citizen that these slights didn’t even faze me anymore.

But Faizah was incensed.

“I think they’re just jealous because you’re doing so well,” she surmised.