On and Off the Fence

He skipped the Olympic closing ceremonies for college freshman orientation. Gerek Meinhardt had been the youngest fencer ever on Team USA. But he moved on before the 2008 Games were even over. His focus would be on Notre Dame.

His future roommate, Jamie O'Brien, had been Facebook messaging with Meinhardt for weeks. They talked about their favorite TV shows and who would bring a futon. A San Francisco Bay Area guy, Meinhardt seemed easygoing enough. He liked basketball and planned to stream every possible Golden State Warriors game.

Finally Meinhardt mentioned that he'd be an athlete at Notre Dame. O'Brien got curious. He was starstruck at what he learned. "He told me he was a fencer but never hinted at the caliber he was," O'Brien says. "It took me Googlesearching his name to find out he was going to Beijing."

Still at Notre Dame six years later, now as an MBA student, Meinhardt remains as humble as he was while a freshman. Since then, he has won an NCAA championship in foil fencing, helped make Notre Dame a fencing powerhouse, and started gunning for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

"Gerek will be remembered as the best male foil fencer here ever. The rise and dominance of Notre Dame foil starts with him," says his coach, Gia Kvaratskhelia. "If he gets to Rio in the shape he wants to be in, he has a legitimate shot at the gold."

But injuries have made it a hard road—and it's not over yet. Only Meinhardt's extraordinary self discipline can see him through.

Getting a Humbling

Fencers run at each other hard down an aluminum strip with frightening weapons in hand. Each match has the classic look of swordplay. This is a sport that was developed in the 15th century, after all, as training for duels. Today, fencers score with touches, not stabs, but the effect is still daunting.

Modern fencing has three events—foil, saber and épée—and they differ slightly in weapon weight and shape. Across each event, the movements are small and efficient. But the way fencers lunge forward, with their back foot pointing to the side, is repetitive. That's why fencers are prone to overuse injuries in their legs and arms.

Meinhardt had used his legs and arms plenty. He had been fencing since age 9. Back home in San Francisco, three-time Olympian Greg Massialas had started a kids' fencing program. Meinhardt's parents signed him up. By the time he was a teen, he wanted to go to the Olympics. At 18, he did.

At age 16, Meinhardt became the youngest men's national foil champion when he won the 2007 U.S. Fencing National Championships. He was the youngest U.S. Olympic fencer of all time and the youngest fencer overall in Bejing.

After taking the gold at the 2012 U.S. National Championships, he was selected as an alternate fencer for the 2012 London Olympics.

Outside the sport, Meinhardt still liked playing basketball for variety. Since this risked injuries, that terrified his coaches. "When he sees a hoop, his eyes start twinkling, and it scares me to death," Kvaratskhelia says.

Meinhardt would also often do cardio exercise to get his heart rate up. His junior year, he was working out one day. Stumbling, he tore his meniscus.

The star fencer had to use a motorized scooter, then crutches, around campus for weeks. O'Brien remembers what his roommate went through. Meinhardt had to watch their dorm room be rearranged for clearer pathways. He also had to strap a loud blood recirculation machine on his knee daily.

Since this was the dead of winter at Notre Dame, Meinhardt even had to be freed once when his scooter got stuck on ice. "We as friends all had to pitch in to help him out," O'Brien says. "When a big lake effect snowstorm would come in and the sidewalks wouldn't be adequately shoveled, it was very treacherous."

Meinhardt by nature is a humble guy—but this helplessness was humbling in the worst sense of the word. Yet as his coaches hoped, he fought through the pain and physical therapy to make the 2012 Olympic team. "I felt like Gerek's destiny was not to get injured and stop his career," Kvaratskhelia says. "I felt his destiny was to be the greatest." Back onto the fencing strip he went.

Scoring a Triumph

Meinhardt took a year off for his injury and a year off to train for the Olympics. So six years after he entered Notre Dame, he could still compete in collegiate fencing as an MBA student. In early 2014, he found himself ranked #1 in the world in men's foil fencing—the first U.S. men's foil fencer to achieve the top ranking. So the pressure was on to win an NCAA championship.

His girlfriend, Lee Kiefer, is also a Notre Dame fencer. She, too, found herself contending for an NCAA national championship. Both competed in Columbus, Ohio, at the end of March. Kiefer won her final match, narrowly beating her teammate and close friend Madison Zeiss to win her second straight championship.

The pressure ratcheted up for Meinhardt. Intensifying it even more, his competitors included defending NCAA champ Alex Massialas of Stanford and 2013 runner-up David Willette of Penn State. They knew each others' weaknesses expertly. All three had long been coached by Greg Massialas, Alex's dad, at the same gym back in San Francisco.

In fencing, points are scored by touching opponents with the weapon. Electronic sensors in their clothing beep for touches too fast and light to be seen. Battling Willette in the final match, Meinhardt got down by several touches. He channeled his discipline. "That kept me calm and determined to keep coming back touch by touch," he says.

The triumph ended with a bus ride from Columbus back to South Bend. Meinhardt was glad to have won, but swiftly got back to business. "It was a great feeling to finish off my NCAA career—a long career, since I came in 2008," he says. "I think I celebrated by not doing that much homework that night."

More than a month later, Meinhardt and Kiefer still hadn't done anything special to commemorate their twin wins. As a pre-med student, Kiefer works hard, too—they often study together, and often travel to tournaments around the globe. "I don't think we know how to celebrate very well," Kiefer says. "We're always on the move."

Angling for More

His collegiate competition days are over, but Meinhardt still has a year left for his MBA. He'll volunteer as a Notre Dame fencing coach next year while training for the 2016 Rio Olympics.

To this day, the only time he brings up being a fencer without being Googled or asked about the sport is with potential employers. Deloitte has already signed him to a post-graduation business analytics position, with a part-time schedule to allow for training back in San Francisco.

Even with a job locked down, Meinhardt still feels driven to get high grades. The night after his national championship win, he slept only four hours. It was a combination of preparation and nervousness for a speech in his Management Speaking class the next day. "The presentations take a lot of effort for me," he says.

His professor, James S. O'Rourke IV, director of the Fanning Center for Business Communication, says he'd never know it, since Meinhardt seems self-assured. "He's very low key, quiet, smiles a lot, and has a command of the room," O'Rourke says. "I've heard him say that he's nervous, but there's no evidence of that."

Yet what really strikes the professor is the way Meinhardt follows up outside class to make sure he's on target. "Only a fraction of my students will do that," O'Rourke says. "This fellow is humble enough to say, ‘Do I have it right?'"

Meinhardt may always be less comfortable speaking in a suit than running down a fencing strip in full mask, weapon in hand. Will he make it to his third Olympics? His coaches know he's injury-prone, but they've seen him steel himself to come back before.

"Gerek can go as far as he wants to go," Kvaratskhelia says. "He's said his goal is Rio. If he's healthy, he will be there."