In December, senior twin sisters Emma and Vera Fung announced their commitments to fence for two prominent East Coast colleges. Emma is headed to Wellesley College (D3) while Vera will attend Brown University (D1).
Emma will be majoring in Economics with the plan to take business and entrepreneur classes at the nearby Babson College and MIT, whereas Vera will be studying electrical engineering.
The Fung sisters’ journey started in 2017, attending lessons in their coach’s backyard every Sunday. For the next five years, they bounced between different fencing clubs and coaches, juggling inconsistent training as clubs were closing down and their own commitment wavered.
Then, in the summer of 2023, they started taking lessons at the Silicon Valley Fencing Center due to its reputation for fostering high attendance and competitive environment.
Vera, who’s a right-handed foil fencer, has been working with coach Andrej Raisch and Emma, a left-handed foil fencer, with coach Oleksii Muruhin. There, they started their intense training of two hours a day, four days a week, with an additional 40 minutes of private lessons on Monday and Friday. They attend monthly competitions, including USA Fencing National Championships in July, Junior Olympics in February and North American Cup (NAC) throughout the year.
In the fall semester of their junior year, they started emailing coaches about their interest in competing at the college level — a later start to seeking recruitments than usual. During their recruitment phase, the twins considered school offerings holistically, rather than prioritizing each school’s fencing division level.
Emma Fung’s recruitment journey
Emma recalls her first semester in junior year as an especially difficult time where she had to simultaneously keep up with fencing, the recruitment process and increasingly rigorous academics.
In February 2024, Emma started talking with the Wellesley fencing coach and attended an official campus visit.
“Wellesley has a good fencing team. I know two girls currently on the team who are both athletes I’ve looked up to since I was little,” Emma said. “And the campus is really beautiful, it’s right next to a lake and I’m also excited to explore Boston.”
Over the summer of 2024, Emma placed first at the USA Fencing National Championships in Division 1A Women’s Foil, which she notes to having looked good on her record. After the competition, the whole family took a trip to the East Coast to visit both sisters’ colleges of interest.
“One thing that I’m excited about is that Wellesley is a women’s college, so it’ll be an entirely new experience since I’ve only attended co-ed schools.. I’m really looking forward to bonding with all the girls,especially on the fencing team,” Emma said.
As a D3 fencing school, Wellesley does not give official offers to athletes but rather sends out letters of recommendation to the admissions office on behalf of the athletes. Emma stayed in constant touch with the Wellesley coach, providing regular updates on her academics and fencing progress. In the fall, she applied Early Decision to Wellesley, as well as Early Action to five other schools as a safety precaution.
“Even though I was already committed to Wellesley, receiving my acceptance was still such an emotional moment for me because it felt like all my years of hard work had culminated into this very letter,” Emma said.
Vera Fung’s recruitment journey
Brown University was one of the three colleges Vera stayed in touch with — regularly sending the coaches grades and competition results. Vera looked mainly at East Coast colleges.
“I received good news on my SAT score, so I decided to update the Brown coach just one more time,” Vera said. “Then I got an email saying he would like to discuss a serious recruitment opportunity for me.”
Given it was only March, Vera was not expecting the official recruitment spot that the coach offered to her later that evening over a Zoom call.
As an Ivy League school, athlete recruitments are not written agreements. Instead, Vera received a “likely letter” that ensured acceptance as long as she maintained her grades.
“It was still pretty stressful until I finally got the official acceptance in December,” Vera said. “But I was so happy it all worked out.”
Sisters reflect on their fencing journey
The Fung sisters said their fencing journey and recruitment processes have been a roller coaster of ups and downs. When they first started the sport, it took a few years to gain momentum and to start taking it seriously, but they feel grateful for their immensely supportive parents — bringing them to out-of-state competitions, replaying recordings to analyze their errors and always being patient and encouraging during difficult times.
“I actually got last in my first competition, which was very discouraging,” Vera said. “But my mom insisted I had potential from the beginning, even though she was the only one to see it.”
Finally, the Fung sisters say they feel grateful to have had each other throughout their athletic journey. Playing the same sport for so many years, they’ve always been a source of encouragement for one another, especially during tough moments during and after competitions. Even on the rare occasions they fenced against each other in competitions, they always made the best of the situation and gave it their all.
“I don’t think I could have gone through everything without Emma. With all the pressure from everybody else, it would have been very challenging alone,” Vera said.
