Jamie and I met regularly, and she gave me exercises I could walk myself through to deescalate myself out of an anxious state. With Jamie’s help, I learned different breathing exercises and ways to use guided imagery to help prevent and mediate my anxiety. I would take fifteen minutes before I began my warm-up to focus on my breathing and my thoughts. I would tell myself, “I’m ready. I’m prepared. I’m strong. I’m a champion.” These mantras helped me visualize the future, to see myself winning. Remembering past losses wasn’t helpful, and those thoughts creeping into my psyche before competitions were what created the anxieties in the first place. I had to remind myself that I was prepared for battle and I had no reason to doubt my abilities. I learned to use my imagination to shape my reality and harness it to serve my needs. It was truly amazing what the mind could do when directed the right way.
It didn’t happen overnight, but by using these techniques I slowly learned how to manage my anxiety so that it wouldn’t derail my career. Feeling better and more in control, I returned my focus to the next big thing, and that next big thing was making the 2012 Olympic team.
Despite having to deal with my anxiety issues, in the two years since making the US National Women’s Saber Team, I was doing more winning than losing. I had qualified for my first Pan American Games in 2011, held in Guadalajara, Mexico, and captured the gold medal along with my teammates. We’d won two team medals at the Fencing World Championships, both bronze, one in 2011 in Catania, Italy, and the other in 2012 in Kiev, Ukraine. And I had won a few individual medals at World Cups throughout the season, helping both my domestic and world rankings. In early 2012, I was ranked number two in the United States and thirteenth in the world. With those stats, qualifying for an Olympic team was now a real possibility.
Akhi thought I could qualify. My family believed I would qualify, and even the media was speculating that I would be going to the games in London. The New Jersey Star-Ledger, the state newspaper, wrote a long feature story on me, as an Olympic hopeful. The headline read, “Maplewood Woman Could Be First American Muslim to Wear Hijab While Competing at Olympics.” The journalist interviewed my parents and came to watch me practice in New York at the foundation. Although the headline made mention of my religion, the article mostly focused on me as an athlete, which I appreciated.
It used to make me feel a little awkward to have people single me out because I was a Muslim. I knew I was unique for being the first potential Olympic athlete to represent the United States wearing a hijab, but I didn’t know if it warranted the level of attention it brought me. I was also the first woman of color on the women’s saber team, but no one ever wrote about that. On the other hand, I was extremely proud to represent Muslim women in sport and show us in a different light than how we had traditionally been portrayed in the media. The acknowledgment of “firsts,” especially in sports, was important to show not only how far we’ve come as people of color, as women, and as a religious minority, but also how far we still have to go to make our world more inclusive. Making the Olympic team would have been an amazing triumph for that reason alone. Every time I spoke to a Muslim audience, someone would always tell me how grateful they were to see a woman of faith succeed at such a high level of sport. It made me proud to know that I was actively changing the narrative for other Muslim women, and it motivated me to continue reaching for the highest levels of sport, like qualifying for the Olympics.
But I didn’t qualify.
Part of the reason I didn’t qualify was beyond my control. In 2012, there was no women’s saber team event in the Olympics, only the individual event. As a rule, fencing is only allocated ten medals during the Olympic Games, even though there are technically twelve events. So, every Olympics, they drop two team events. In 2012, they dropped the women’s saber and the men’s épée team events. That only left two possible slots for Americans in the individual competitions instead of the usual four. So, when the qualification year came to a close, I wasn’t one of the top two women saber fencers. Mariel and Dagmara ranked one and two and went to London to represent the United States. For the record, they finished fourth and eighth respectively.
On the day the team was named, it felt like everyone in my corner wilted in defeat. My family was heartbroken. I was disappointed but not entirely surprised. I didn’t have a real strategy to qualify for the games. There was no plan in place, other than to continue to train hard. But that isn’t enough. People had hinted that I could qualify for the Olympic team, but no one, not even my coaches at the foundation, actually helped lay out a specific plan to help get me there. It wasn’t until after I failed to qualify for the Olympics that I really started to consider what making an Olympic team would mean, not just for me as an athlete but for the communities whom I represented, particularly the Muslim community here in the United States.
There are about 6.5 million American Muslims in this country, making them one of the largest religious groups in the United States. American Muslims are a diverse and growing population with a thriving social and cultural scene catering to their unique needs. Throughout the year, thousands of Muslims attend regional and national conventions throughout North America. There are Muslim schools, stores, restaurants, and of course mosques. There are Muslim newspapers, magazines, radio stations, publishers, websites, apps, and YouTube channels. At almost every college and university in the country there are Muslim student groups. There’s even an annual Muslim Day at Six Flags amusement parks around the county. And it is within this Muslim community that I gained my first level of “celebrity” status as an athlete. This made sense to me because, while expansive, the Muslim community in the United States is still relatively small. When it came to professional female athletes who wore hijab, I was one in a group of one. So I quickly became a public figure within this Muslim world, regularly traveling to speak about my experiences as a minority member of Team USA. From campus visits to conference keynotes, I was getting invitations from all across the United States. My name and unique story as a hijabi fencer had spread quickly throughout the community.
The only problem was, people in the Muslim community often referred to me as “the Olympic fencer” because I was building a reputation as a professional athlete who competed on a United States national team. I knew it was an honest mistake for people to equate my career as a member of Team USA with Olympic stature. Add to that a handful of media articles referring to me as an Olympic hopeful in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, and it’s understandable why I was being mistaken for an Olympian. While I didn’t fault anyone for the confusion, as someone who had failed to qualify, it was a painful reminder every time I had to correct someone to say, “Sorry, I’m not an Olympian.”
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. Habiba and I have known each other since our summers playing at the mosque together when we were in elementary school. She was always busy buried in paperwork at her corporate job, and I was constantly traveling for competition, so we often went months without seeing each other, but we did our best to keep in touch. The store had a dazzling array of formal dresses perfect for some of the special events I had coming up. 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. As a professional athlete who spent the majority of her time in sweatpants and sneakers, I jumped at any opportunity to dress up. That was another stereotype I was trying to break—that fashion and sports were mutually exclusive. I was an athlete and I loved fashion. I wore eyeliner most days, even when I fenced, and wasn’t interested in how anyone felt about it. My eyeliner was like war paint; I never went anywhere without it
“Habiba, everything in here looks like it was made for older women,” I said to my friend, making moves to leave the store.
“Don’t give up so quickly,” Habiba said, pulling me back to the rack of dresses. “We should be able t
o find something.” She pulled out two long, dark-blue dresses with intricate beadwork around the sleeves. “What about these?” she said.
I eyed the two dresses and thought they looked more mother of the bride than something I as a twenty-six-year-old was interested in wearing. Before I could voice my disapproval, we were interrupted.
“Excuse me, are you Ibtihaj Muhammad? The Olympic fencer?”
A young girl stood in front of me, a scrap of paper and a pencil in her hand. She was wearing blue jeans, a pink-checkered button-down shirt, and a blue hijab. A shy grin decorated her face. I guessed she was probably eleven or twelve years old. I started to respond, but Habiba jumped in to answer for me.
“Actually, she’s not an Olympian.”
I turned my head and shot Habiba a glare.
“Can I still have your autograph?” the little girl asked.
“Oh, of course,” I said, taking the paper from her hand and scribbling my name and some kind words.
“Thank you,” she said and rewarded me with another huge smile. “I want to be just like you when I grow up. Except I don’t want to fence. I’m going to the Olympics to run track.”
I smiled at the little girl, wishing her the best of luck, and told her to never give up on her dreams. It was such an endearing moment, but I was annoyed at Habiba for butting in. Was I mad at her for embarrassing me? She had only told the truth. I wasn’t an Olympian, and the reality was it hurt to even think about it.
“Let’s go, Habiba,” I said as I headed for the department store exit. “I’m going to order a dress online,” I said, making an excuse to cut our afternoon shopping spree short. Luckily, Habiba didn’t try to change my mind. She probably sensed I was irritated. We said our goodbyes in the parking lot, and I hopped in my car and headed back home to Maplewood.
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. When Habiba announced that I wasn’t an Olympian, it reminded me of all the naysayers and people who hadn’t believed in me or my fencing potential. From the coaches to the competitors in my life who doubted my abilities—because I was Black, because I was a woman, because I was Muslim—they all ran through my mind. All of the times I’d been told no crowded into my memory until I wanted to scream. I gripped the steering wheel tighter and forced myself to breathe calmly, but I couldn’t tamp down the emotions brewing inside of me. That little girl from the department store deserved a role model. She deserved to see someone who looked like her in sports. Representation and inclusion matter. When I started on this journey I always told myself that I wanted to see how far fencing could take me, and now I realized that the journey was bigger than me. My success would mean so much to so many people. Watching Dominique Dawes flip her way to Olympic gold in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games was the reason my sister Asiya had started gymnastics. And if it weren’t for Venus and Serena Williams, I know I would have never picked up a tennis racket that summer back in middle school. It was in that moment in my car, heading south on the turnpike, that I decided that I was going to make an Olympic team. I didn’t care that it would be four years of grind. I didn’t care how old I would be. I was going to be on the United States Olympic Team in the 2016 summer games. There was no other option.
CHAPTER 13
To be a champ you have to believe in yourself when no one else will.
—SUGAR RAY ROBINSON
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. The individuals I was looking for had to be smart and trustworthy. I was looking for people with positive energy and a track record of excellence.
It had become painfully obvious that Akhi was no longer able to maintain our same level of training. It felt like once he had proven himself capable of helping me qualify for the national team, his priorities shifted. 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. Now he was frequently absent from the foundation and my competitions. Too often he was late or simply didn’t show up for our lessons. During this time, Akhi became a father, so fatherhood was likely pulling his attention away from fencing. I understood that Akhi had different goals as a coach than I did as a competitor and that I wasn’t his only student, but selfishly I wanted him to stick with me. I wanted a committed coach who had made an Olympic team, who knew exactly what it took to get me to the promised land. I wanted a coach who had a shared interest in helping me grow technically and tactically and whom I could count on 24/7. But after all of these years, I had finally come to realize that depending on anyone other than myself was a recipe for failure. Ultimately, I was the one responsible for my own success, and if that meant I had to seek out help to push forward, then that was exactly what I was going to do.
Keeth Smart was the first person I sought to be my mentor. He wasn’t a coach, but I still wanted him to be on my personal team of advisors. Keeth had led the US men’s saber team to a silver medal in the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and was arguably the best US male saber fencer of all time. He had since retired from competition, but he liked to come back to the Peter Westbrook Foundation—where he had gotten his start—to mentor and teach the younger kids on Saturday mornings. He said it was his way of giving back after fencing gave him so much. After watching the way Keeth worked with the kids, it was easy to see he had a vast knowledge of fencing and he would be able to help me master tactical avenues of the sport I was missing. I started to pick Keeth’s brain about his training prior to qualifying for the games, what kind of things he focused on with his trainers, which drills I could incorporate into my training to help with my speed, and any other tips he might have for me. Keeth had a demanding, full-time job and wasn’t even at the foundation that much, but he was kind enough to give me his cell number and make time despite his busy schedule. Keeth’s love for the sport was genuine, and he saw how invested I was in progressing. I was lucky and grateful to have him in my corner.
One of the most useful things Keeth did for me was to give me a list of simple exercises to do every day to make me a better fencer. He told me if I focused on these seven simple things before practice for thirty minutes, if I got to the foundation thirty minutes earlier than everyone else and plowed through these exercises, they would add up to make a difference. When I looked at the list, I was skeptical. How could doing what seemed like nothing more than warm-ups make any real difference? These were plyometric exercises, like jumps and lateral lunges that Keeth said, with repetition, would help increase my explosiveness and foot speed. He said if I did these exercises for thirty minutes at least four times a week, that would be two hours of extra practice that I was getting, not just more than my teammates at the foundation and more than my US teammates, but also more than my competitors on the world circuit.
“Don’t cheat on these,” Keeth said to me, noting the look of doubt on my face. “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.”
I took the list and promised I would start doing the exercises.
Keeth wasn’t just a great fencer, he really was a smart guy. He was committed to having an equally stellar career outside of sports. Keeth had parlayed his skills and work ethic from fencing into an MBA from Columbia University and a job in the financial sector.
When I first sought Keeth’s advice, he asked me how much studying I did of my competition. I told him about that first World Cup in London where Candace and I had sat with our notebooks watching the competition. I ran to my locker to grab my fencing journal—a simple black moleskin notebo
ok with lined pages and furious handwritten notes—and then showed it to Keeth. He flipped through the pages and saw the detailed descriptions I had of almost every woman I’d ever competed against over the years. I wrote things like, Fencer X “will take parry but often misses repost. Use long attack and finish under.” I recorded everyone’s techniques, and I strategized how best to beat them.
Keeth was impressed. “This is really good. You can be the fastest woman on the strip, but it’s important to fence every match smart. At the start of every competition, know who you’re up against so you can strategize. You’ve put in too much time and energy to wing it. You can win sometimes with speed and strength, but if you want to be consistent and if you want to be the best, you have to be smart.”
“Well, I guess since your name is Keeth Smart, you’re in a good position to know.” I couldn’t resist making the joke.
Thankfully, Keeth laughed, too. “Who knew you have a funny side under all that bravado.”
“I can be funny,” I said, pretending hurt. “Ask anyone in my family.”
Keeth laughed again. But I didn’t want to get off track.
“How do you draw the attack out of your opponent?” I said, turning the conversation back to fencing. “When I watch you fence, you’re so good at making people fall short in their attack. How do you do it?” I said.
Sometimes Keeth would give me scenarios to try in practice that he thought would work against certain fencers based on their style of fencing. I would write those down in my journal and refer to them often when I was on the road. My journal became my guide. It was what I relied on, being that I often didn’t have a personal coach by my side, given Akhi’s increasingly spotty attendance. More often than not, I would be the only fencer at a major international competition without a personal coach by her side. It makes fencing on the world circuit really tough, given that our personal coaches act as our advocates and voices on the strip. Whenever the calls are left to the referees, it is our personal coach who steps in to persuade the refs to call a point one way or the other. With Akhi missing, there was no one to speak up for me. And his absence was not only felt on the strip. During competitions our personal coaches gave us lessons to keep us in the best shape while competing, so with no Akhi, I was left to my own devices. Here I was doing everything I could to qualify for the Olympics, but I was missing a large part of my training that each of my competitors had ample access to. Sometimes that thought would bring back those feelings of panic, and I feared I’d never get to see my dream realized. Once again, I felt like I was putting in all of the work required of me, but I lacked a coach willing to show me the way. It seemed a particularly cruel place to be.
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