Olympic gold medalist Lauren Scruggs ’25 would not have been a fencer had it not been for her older brother. His obsession with Star Wars led their mother to sign him up for a local fencing club in Brooklyn when Scruggs was eight. Despite an initial desire to quit, her brother stuck with the sport and ultimately dragged Scruggs along so their mother would have both children involved in the same activity. Scruggs developed a love for the sport immediately that would spark the beginning of her Olympic journey. As she said to the Independent, “I just liked [fencing] immediately…and liked the competitive nature of it.”
Unlike many other fencers, Scruggs did not pick her own style of fencing—rather, she once again followed in the footsteps of her brother. As she put it, “a lot of my early beginnings in fencing… just happened. My brother did foil, so I did foil, and the club we went to was only foil.” Foil fencing involves poking with a target area of the upper torso and the back—during each bout, athletes compete in three three-minute rounds for the first to 15 touches. Epee utilizes a similar poking style, but the target area is your opponent’s whole body. Scruggs opted to stay with foil instead of epee, as her physical build better suited this style of fencing.
Fencing has a linear track for progression amongst the age divisions, with athletes aging up through the different divisions—Scruggs naturally rose through the age groups. She started representing the United States when she began juniors (under 21s) and traveled internationally for competitions. Scruggs also considered fencing for Jamaica at one point in her career. “My family’s from Jamaica, so I thought about representing them, but I’m just very American, so I decided to stay with U.S. fencing.”
When deciding where she would compete collegiately, Scruggs was caught between Columbia and Harvard. Her older brother had fenced at Columbia in the same city where the two grew up; on the other hand, Harvard’s coach Daria Schneider had developed a strong relationship with Scruggs. Schneider herself was a five-time member of the U.S. fencing national team and a two-time medalist at world championships after a successful collegiate career at Columbia. In making her final decision, Scrugg stated, “I wanted to leave New York. I wanted to be in more of a college [setting]” compared to a more “spread out” Columbia. She valued that Cambridge offered the perfect blend of urban life and college campus.
Her three seasons at Harvard have been extremely successful; Scruggs was the NCAA Women’s foil champion in 2023 and contributed to the Crimson’s team NCAA title in 2024.
Scruggs had always dreamed of becoming an Olympian, but the first time Paris started to become a reality was after she was selected for her first Seniors World Team. “Until then, I didn’t really think I had a shot. Obviously, I was always pretty close, but to actually qualify for the Olympic-style team really made me realize I could make the Olympics this year.” When the teams were announced in April 2024, Scruggs was named to the U.S. women’s epee team along with two other former Ivy League athletes. Prior to the selection, she had won nine individual medals at the Junior World Championships.
Before leaving for the Olympics, Scruggs was training five times a week on top of balancing an internship in New York City. After wrapping up her day job, she would walk a few blocks down to fence for up to four hours of practice before returning home. She repeated this cycle until she departed for Paris. While she had to miss several weeks to compete in Paris in addition to other training weekends, her firm was extremely supportive of her athletic endeavors. As she commented, “It’s not every day you have an intern going to the Olympics, so everyone was just super excited.” Scruggs will be returning to this firm full-time after successfully navigating this unique work-life balance situation.
Scruggs arrived at the Olympic Village with the 592 U.S. Olympians with enough time to prepare for her upcoming bouts. Scruggs stated, “It was a little overwhelming because the village is just filled with all these different athletes from around the world, and obviously they all want to do well.” To escape the chaos of the village, Scruggs took full advantage of the Team USA High Performance Training Center for all of her pre-competition practices.
For the individual tournament, Scruggs had the mindset of “trying to fence to the best of my ability” with a plan to “go out there and put [up] a fight every bout.” She successfully executed her plan as she defeated fencers from Singapore, Canada, and Italy going into the finals. Scruggs’s successful individual campaign led her to compete against her teammate Lee Kiefer for the gold medal. There were no hard feelings at the end of the bout, which saw Scruggs claim her first Olympic silver medal. “We’re more so excited that we’re doing that at the finals, which has never happened before.”
The focus for both quickly shifted to the team foil tournament, where Scruggs earned her first Olympic gold medal in helping the U.S. defeat China, Canada, and Italy. The team entered the tournament as the second seed and was coming off a fourth-place finish at the 2023 World Championships; this was the first-ever team gold medal for the U.S. in the women’s foil. Scruggs herself clinched the victory through her position as the anchor leg.
Scruggs has returned to campus this fall since coming off of her extremely successful summer. In her own words, “The Olympics are fun, but it’s mostly stressful. So, I’m actually really happy to go back to school and be with all my communities.” For her, this is not stepping down from one stage in her life to another, but rather an opportunity to enjoy spending time with friends and living the true college experience. Scruggs is grateful to be returning to the routine of Harvard life and is looking forward to once again representing the Crimson.
Kate Oliver ’26 (koliver@college.harvard.edu) watched the Olympics during her summer internship.