For years, I had been working out at an all-women’s gym in New Jersey—the same all-women’s gym my mother belonged to—but I could tell I wasn’t getting anything out of the facilities anymore. I knew that I needed a facility that catered to athletes, not just women trying to make good on their New Year’s resolutions. I found a gym a few towns over in Springfield. Once I started, it took me a while to find the right trainer. Because of my faith, I debated whether or not I wanted to work with a male or female, but ultimately, I decided I wouldn’t limit my choices by gender, I would simply find the best person for the job. So when I met Jake, I knew he was the one. Initially, I didn’t tell Jake I was on a national team, but I told him I was a fencer and that I wanted to work on speed, strength, and agility. Jake was the type of trainer that no matter what mood I was in or how much I might complain, he wouldn’t accept anything less than 100 percent in every workout. I loved his tough love, humor, and that we were the same age. He was easy to get along with. The thing I enjoyed most about Jake, though, was that he was totally dependable. If I needed or wanted to work out at six o’clock in the morning or ten at night, Jake would be there, no questions asked and ready to work.
After working with Jake, I realized that circuit training was the piece of the puzzle that I had been missing prior to 2012. It was high-intensity metabolic strength training that I needed to make me more dominant on the strip. I could lunge farther and faster. I was stronger, and my speed picked up with this new level of training. Suddenly, with this small change in my workout regimen, I was a better balanced athlete. I diversified my training, too, by incorporating Pilates reformer, kickboxing, interval running, everything and anything to increase my stamina and strength. My performance on the strip started showing that I was headed in the right direction. I qualified for every national team for seven years straight, and that wasn’t an easy thing to do. There were always women cycling on and off the team, as no one’s ranking was guaranteed. I had to battle for my place at the top every single season, but I made it because I was stronger and fencing smarter. And as a team we had some impressive showings as well. In 2013 we won the bronze medal at World Cups in Italy, Turkey, and Belgium. At the end of the season, we captured the bronze medal at the World Championships in Budapest, Hungary. My individual results continued to climb as well, improving both my national and international rankings, being recognized both on and off the strip for my efforts. Despite our success as a team, however, I was still wading through the minefield of micro-aggressions and psychological warfare from my teammates and the coaching staff. My contributions to our winning record did nothing to stem the abuse.
It was March 2013, and we were in Moscow for a Grand Prix. At that point, the national team still consisted of Mariel, Dagmara, Daria, and me. Although she wasn’t officially on the team, a younger fencer named Eliza Stone was also traveling with us for the competition. Many people believed she would make the team at the end of the season because she had been having a breakout year so far. Both Eliza and I had fenced well on the first day of competition in Moscow. I advanced through my bracket, eliminating some heavy hitters on the world circuit, including my teammate Dagmara, by a wide margin. Eliza and I tied for third place and were both really happy with our results and wanted to celebrate. We were rather limited in dinner options, as we were instructed not to venture far from the hotel for safety reasons. There was a decent Uzbek restaurant most teams frequented whenever we traveled to Moscow. Because it was late and adjacent to the hotel, Eliza and I decided to go there.
It wasn’t surprising to me that during our matches the rest of the US fencers hadn’t bothered to cheer for me, especially since I beat Dagmara to get to the semifinals. Daria and Mariel hadn’t had their best day, either. But Eliza was disappointed that the team she hoped to join one day wasn’t in her corner. The team members hadn’t cheered for her as she made her run to the semifinals. I didn’t want to dash her hopes by telling her all I’d witnessed on the team, so I downplayed my teammates’ behavior.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said to Eliza, trying to boost her confidence as we walked into the restaurant. “You fenced well today.”
Eliza smiled. “I still can’t believe how well we did.”
As we stepped into the dimly lit restaurant with a handful of mostly empty tables we both stopped in our tracks. There in the far corner of the restaurant sat the rest of the team—Mariel, Dagmara, and Daria—in the middle of dinner.
We waited to see if our teammates would invite us to join them. They didn’t. They didn’t even pause to wave or say hello.
A hostess appeared and greeted us in English.
She smiled at us and led us to a table next to our teammates. She probably assumed we’d want to sit close by. No sooner had we sat down than Mariel, Dagmara, and Daria abruptly stood up and left the restaurant. They left their half-eaten dinners on the table without saying a single word to us. I think Eliza was shocked. I know I was. Even after all of these years with the three of them and their cold behavior toward me, I could not understand why they acted like that toward me and now Eliza.
“What was that about?” Eliza asked as we watched their retreating forms.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I honestly do not know,” I said. “I could make something up or say it’s because they are upset about their performance, but anything I say would be a guess. And to be honest, their behavior is so bizarre to me, I can’t even begin to imagine why anyone would act that way to other human beings.”
Eliza didn’t look like my answer satisfied her. She clearly wanted to know more, but we agreed not to talk about them for the rest of the evening. We could have spent the whole evening and the rest of the night dissecting Mariel’s, Dagmara’s, and Daria’s behavior, but I wouldn’t let them ruin my evening. And I didn’t want to color Eliza’s opinions about her future teammates. She could form her own thoughts.
So we ate and celebrated our success on the strip.
Despite her discouraging introduction to the team dynamic, Eliza continued her quest to make the national team, and she displaced Daria as our newest team member. I was excited to have Eliza on the team, hoping for a friend in what had widely been a lonely experience. Unfortunately for me and Eliza, her befriending me meant being iced out by Mariel and Dagmara, so her entrance onto the team did nothing to quell my discomfort. The national coach was primarily interested in Mariel’s success, and Mariel’s mother was still our team manager. My hopes for a change in the team dynamic quickly disappeared as things pretty much stayed the same. I was the odd woman out, and no one cared to bring me into the fold.
One year we were at a training camp in Poland before the World Championships, and the training camp happened to fall during Ramadan, the religious month when Muslims abstain from food and drink from sunrise to sunset for thirty days. Because it was summer and the days were quite long, I was fasting for sixteen hours a day. I would go to the cafeteria during dinner, pack my food into a container, and then eat in my room once the sun set around eleven p.m. And then at three or four in the morning, when the sun was poised to rise again, I would start the fast all over again. In that short window between eleven p.m. and four a.m., instead of getting good rest, I would spend my time drinking copious amounts of water to make sure I didn’t become dehydrated during practice. The coaching staff and my teammates didn’t understand why I was fasting or make any attempts to understand the reasons it was important to me. As for most Muslims, Ramadan was a special time for me; fasting allowed for spiritual reflection and a remembrance of God and His mercy. I had been fasting since I was a little kid when we’d wake up with my parents early in the morning to eat and pray together. It never occurred to me not to fast, just like it never occurred me to stop training during Ramadan. I was more than ready to make sacrifices so I could do both things. But the coach and my teammates had no sympathy for my situation.
Instead, Ed continued to push me without pause. If I took a break or had a hard time catching my b
reath, I was told I was being lazy. That made me so angry because I had always been one of those people who worked harder than the next person no matter what. And not just in fencing, but in every aspect of my life. So when the coach would suggest that I was slacking off, I wouldn’t say much, I’d just get back on the strip and do my best. I didn’t feel comfortable defending myself because I didn’t want to perpetuate the stereotype of being an angry Black woman. I was always conscious about how I would come across to my white teammates and my white coach in this mostly white sport. I didn’t dare give them the ammunition they craved to justify their cold behavior toward me.
I had been on the team for almost three years at this point, and Ed had shown zero interest in understanding what Ramadan was or why I was fasting. He had no desire to know me as a person. I wasn’t looking to force my religion on anyone, but a tiny bit of understanding on his part could have gone a long way. It’s what a good leader should have done. But his attitude toward me and fasting felt like, “I don’t understand why you would choose to starve yourself.” I found his behavior completely baffling and totally disrespectful. I wondered why he couldn’t approach me with just a hint of empathy, knowing how hard I worked every day. But the words, “Are you okay, Ibti? Do you need to rest for a minute, Ibti?” never came out of his mouth.
By this point, my fencing career on Team USA had become a mental game. I had to find ways to block out all of the distractions in order to fully focus on the goal ahead of me. There was an art to it, and it was something that, by the grace of Allah, I was able to eventually figure out. But not before I spent dozens of hours crying and unhappy, surrounded by people who made me feel inferior and devalued.
“Ibtihaj!” my mother shouted one day. “Are you even listening to me?”
“Sorry, Mommy, what did you say?” I said, looking around the crowded café. We were sitting in one of our favorite girls’ getaway spots in Maplewood on a rare Sunday afternoon that I wasn’t traveling for a competition.
“What I said,” my mother repeated in a more soothing tone, “is that I’m worried about you. You’re killing yourself at the gym and at the foundation and I understand that, but then you come home from these competitions so upset. Is it worth it, baby? Because you know your father and I don’t think you need to prove anything to anyone. Your health is more important.”
I could feel a wall of tears gather behind my eyelids. I wanted so much to let them fall, but then it felt like I would fall, too, into a million little pieces. My mother’s concern was almost too much to bear because it meant I wasn’t hiding my anguish very well. I was miserable much of the time. I was in physical pain after almost every workout. Sometimes I couldn’t sleep because I was so worried that I hadn’t trained hard enough. All of that coupled with my teammates and coaching staff who made no effort to mask their disdain for me. To confront that kind of energy day in and day out was mentally and emotionally exhausting, and now my mother could see it on my face. She was giving me permission to quit. I knew she’d never say the words aloud, but I could see the concern etched in her eyes.
I pulled in a deep breath of air and released it slowly. I forced a smile on my face and prayed my mother believed me when I said, “I’m okay, Mommy.”
“No, you’re not,” my mother said, taking a big gulp of her coffee. “I’m your mother and I think I know when my child is not okay.”
I placed my hand over my mother’s hand and gave it a squeeze. “I said I was going to do this, and I am not going to quit now because things are hard.”
Now my mother looked like she was going to cry. Now it was her turn to breathe deeply.
“Ibtihaj,” she started, “you have always known what you wanted to do and no one could stop you once you made your mind up, so I’m not going to try to stop you now, but I want you to understand that no one will think any of less of you if you decide to move on.”
“I know,” I said to my mom, but inside I was thinking of the one person who would think less of me if I quit. Me! I couldn’t let myself down. I had made a promise to myself to make the Olympic team. I had promised myself and all of the little girls who looked like me that I was going to go all the way. If I gave up now, how would I face them? How would I face myself? But to my mother, I just said, “I promise you, Mom, that if it ever gets to be too much, I’ll stop. But I’m not there yet.”
My mom stared at me. “If you say so.”
“If you just keep cheering me on and taking my late-night phone calls then I’ll be okay, Mommy. I promise,” I said.
“Okay,” my mother said, eyeing me carefully. “Okay.”
I wasn’t just trying to make my mother feel good. It was true that I couldn’t have survived my journey to the Olympics without her. She was the nexus of my support team. She started coming to more of my international competitions and always had her phone available to take my calls when I needed a loving voice to remind me that I could triumph on the strip. The same criteria I used to assemble my training team, I used with my emotional well-being team. I kept a small group of people around me, as anchors in my storm, but more importantly a smile and some sunshine during the darkness. Paola Pliego was a star fencer on Mexico’s women’s saber team. She was almost ten years younger than me, but our paths always crossed during World Cups, and soon we became best friends. I loved her positive outlook on life; she always had a smile on her face. Like me, she was relentless on the strip, but she was always able to leave fencing behind once she took off her mask and carry on with life in a loving way. I loved that about her, and as our friendship blossomed on and off the strip, she helped me not to feel so alone when the team traveled abroad. Whenever we could, we’d coordinate our schedules, meet for meals, and go sightseeing in whatever city we were competing or training in.
I also began to depend on my sister Faizah in more ways than one. Now that Faizah was fencing more regularly, we often traveled together to the same competitions. Sometimes Faizah and I even fenced each other at tournaments: that’s how good she was. My sister’s national and international ranking was climbing steadily, even though she was balancing competing with a heavy courseload at college. She wasn’t able to make it to every tournament, but things were so much better with her around. She witnessed firsthand some of the outlandish treatment I received at the hands of my teammates. Just having someone else see what I was going through helped in the sense that I knew I wasn’t crazy.
“I can’t believe they ‘forgot’ to tell you about team practice,” Faizah said to me one night after a day spent training before a tournament.
Somehow no one figured it important to tell me the time of a mandatory team practice Ed had scheduled. Then I was chastised when I arrived one hour late. This type of “accident” had become so common to me—sometimes the team manager would forget to include me on team emails—that I hardly blinked. My sister, on the other hand, was bewildered as to why I was willing to put up with it. I had gotten so used to being treated like a second-class citizen that these slights didn’t even faze me anymore. But Faizah was incensed.
“I think they’re just jealous because you’re doing so well,” she surmised.
“Maybe. I hope it’s jealousy and not something worse. I don’t even know, Faizah,” I said, throwing my hands up in mock surrender. “All I do know is that I can’t give them any more of my energy by worrying about their issues.”
“It’s so not fair,” Faizah said. “You work so hard. You don’t deserve to be treated like this.”
After three years on the team I had finally gotten to the point where I refused to give it any more attention.
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” I said to Faizah. “Just having you here with me is enough. I want you to maintain your focus on winning as well. Don’t let these people distract you from winning.”
“Is that how you handle all of this?” Faizah asked, a look of concern still marking her face.
“Yeah,” I said, keeping my voice neutral to protect her. I needed to gi
ve her the strength that no one had given me. “I try to put this stuff aside so I can focus on the sport.”
Faizah and I didn’t spend a whole lot of time discussing my teammates, but even though nothing was ever said aloud, I got the distinct impression that my little sister appointed herself my protector on the fencing circuit. She was always there when I needed her. Sometimes it was just a look she shot me across the room, or there were times when she’d give me a high-five to congratulate me on a bout well fought. Sometimes it felt like she was the older sister, given how much I grew to depend on not just her skills and advice as a training partner but also on her comforting presence in what too often felt like enemy territory.
I still often found myself without a personal coach in my corner at competitions, but I almost always had some combination of my mother, Faizah, and Paola as part of my cheering squad. Though they didn’t carry the same weight as a coach in the coach’s box, they soothed my soul and buoyed my spirits to no end. I thanked Allah I had them in my life.
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