Gillian Litynski falls short in fencing match

Student-Athlete.

Those two words were carefully and deliberately placed to show the priority that academics hold over athletics for the millions of college athletes who juggle school and sports. Junior fencer Gillian Litynski chose to put “student” before “athlete”.

Litynski, a global studies and nursing double major, studied abroad in Israel for the fall of 2013 . Despite being gone for a large portion of the season, she was still able to qualify for and compete in the NCAA Fencing Championship this past weekend .

Litynski finished eighth overall in the women’s sabre . This came as some disappointment to Litynski, who finished third overall in the same event last year . However, Litynski said it was all worth it.

“I had taken the entire fall off to travel to Israel, so that being said, I was pretty pleased with my performance because I had only been training for the last two and a half months,” she said. “I was a little disappointed because last year I finished higher than I did (this year)."

Although her athletics suffered at the expense of her academics, Litynski has no regrets. 

“I definitely feel like it was something that was worth it because I did have the opportunity to fence some while I was abroad, just maybe not the same rigorous training I would have had here at Carolina," she said. 

"It was definitely a good learning experience and I don’t think I would take it back. I still have another year to compete.”

Her coach, Ron Miller , agreed that while Litynski’s performance was somewhat disappointing, she made the right call.

“The main issue, I think, this year was that she had an opportunity to go abroad in the fall,” Miller said. “It was an opportunity that she should not have passed up, so I am glad she went. But it cost her two and half months of training. She might have been a little sharper had she been able to be her for the whole year, but you can’t second guess that. Educational opportunities have to come first.”

Senior Sam Austin also competed this weekend in the NCAA Fencing championships, finishing 16th overall in a competition with 24 fencers .

Miller said he was a little disappointed at the way the weekend went overall.

“Generally speaking, both of them fenced exceptionally well, both in the regionals to get there and then the championship,” Miller said. “But maybe just a little bit shy of what their goals were.

But in light of only having two athletes, he commended their efforts. 

“I guess you could say we finished 19th . That is shy of what we did do in the regular season, but with only two athletes in the tournament, that’s actually a pretty good result," he said. 

"There were 24, 25 teams in the tournament, so we did better than some. And we did better than some that had more athletes than we did.”