Nickolas Rusadze rising to the top of fencing world

Nickolas Rusadze shown in his gold-medal winning match at the 2023 Junior Olympics in Denver. (Serge Timacheff Photo)

John Jay graduate Nickolas Rusadze takes a break from his training at Tim Morehouse Fencing Club in Port Chester. (Jim MacLean Photos)

Nickolas Rusadze and his coach and father, Slava Grigoriev, pose with his medal from the summer nationals in Milwaukee.

By JIM MACLEAN

It’s in his blood.

He felt that from a young age, but after a decade of dedication, recent John Jay graduate Nickolas Rusadze knows it takes a whole lot more to reach the level he has in the sport he loves.

Fencing at the highest level is a sport of millimeters and milliseconds, a chess match in motion using cat-like reflexes to decipher your opponents’ next move and your response in the blink of an eye, and Rusadze has made the commitment to try and master that skill set.

His four years of high school were a lot different than most of his John Jay classmates. Fencing has taken him around the world, but to get there he had to make a lot of sacrifices. Instead of hanging around at home with friends, he drives six days a week to practice three to four hours each day at the Tim Morehouse Fencing Club in Port Chester.

All that hard work has paid off and helped earn him a scholarship to the top collegiate fencing program in the country. Most sports fans think of Notre Dame College for its football program, but by far the most successful sports program for the Fighting Irish this century has been fencing. Notre Dame is the defending NCAA Division 1 champion, winners of four of the last five NCAA titles, and 14 team championships overall.

Rusadze says it was a dream to fence for Notre Dame and he made that dream come true. It was one more accomplishment on a long list of milestones in an already impressive career for a 17-year-old. He has come a long way since he was a little kid following his father, Slava Grigoriev, around the fencing world. Grigoriev is a two-time Olympian from Kazakhstan, competing in the 1992 Olympics with the USSR unified team and in 1996 for Kazakhstan.

“I’ve been fencing about 10 years, my dad went to the Olympics twice, he’s my coach and he got me started,” Nickolas said. “It’s something I’ve always been around, he had his own club so it was like my second home. I’d be there every day.  When I was younger I was just waiting for my chance to start.”

Once he got started, he was hooked. He has made a total commitment to the sport of fencing, at first traveling around the country to tournaments and then around the world for international competitions.

He got serious about the age of 15 competing in foil events at the cadet level for fencers under the age of 17. He won the gold medal at the Junior Olympics in Denver, then the gold medal at the North American Cup in Orlando, and the cadet gold medal and junior (under 20 age class) silver medal at the Pan American Championships in Rio de Janeiro in 2024. He just returned from the summer nationals in Milwaukee, where he finished third in the junior foil tournament against a field of 364 fencers, including many collegiate fencers, even a couple of his new teammates at Notre Dame.

It has been quite a ride, and he’s just getting started.

“I started getting serious when I was 15 and I made my first international tournament in Slovakia and I won, took first, then two weeks later I finished second in Italy and it kind of took off after that,” Rusadze said. “I’ve gone all over Europe, Thailand, China, Columbia, Rio, and all over the country. The travel gets a little tiring. My first year internationally, I was on two travel teams and doing domestic tournaments all at the same time traveling every weekend.”

After graduating with his classmates at Caramoor in June, Rusadze went to the nationals in Milwaukee. It was a good trip competing in the older age group at the national level for the first time and finishing third against the top fencers from all over the country.

Rusadze cruised through his pool with five easy victories, and then scored a 15-12 win over Jason Qian and a 15-11 win over Adrian Wang to advance. He had to dig deep to score a victory in the final eight against Jacob Lee, an opponent who had beaten him before, but Rusadze prevailed with a 15-11 win and finished tied for third.

“I was happy, a real confidence boost to compete at nationals for the first time at the junior level,” Rusadze said of his tournament. “I was doing great, but I was really exhausted heading into my top eight bout and I was able to fight through that and get a win against a tough opponent I had lost to before. My whole body was banged up and all my muscles were tired and sore. Everybody has good and bad days, and that was a good day.”

He was trailing in the match against Lee, but he talked it over with his father at the break and turned it around to win the match and advance.

“He was not very confident at the break and the score was 11-8, but he listened perfectly and beat him 15-11, he did a great job putting it together and it took a lot of energy,” Grigoriev said of his son. “He did great to take third. It was a tough situation in a tough tournament and he did great.”

Grigoriev admits it can be hard to be a coach and a father at the same time, but it is a special way of spending time together as a family. He was there in Milwaukee with all three of his sons. Nickolas’s younger brother Michael is now competing as a 12-year-old.

“Last week, to be with him and have all three of my sons together, his older brother coaches and younger brother fences, it’s nice to be all together as a family,” admitted Grigoriev. “It’s very tough, I see what he does, so much sacrifice, preparation, and you can’t do it if you don’t have fun. He needs to like it from the start. For many father/son coaches, it’s a challenge to try and manage being a father and as a coach you have to push them and prepare them for competition.”

It’s a lot of travel, every day two hours in the car back and forth to Port Chester, and then every weekend on the road. One trip took them to four tournaments in 10 days, from New York to Paris and Marseilles, then on to Bangkok in Thailand and Seoul in Korea and back home. This week they came home from Milwaukee and they are off to Aruba and then Europe for fencing in Hungary and Italy.

Rusadze knows the sacrifice he has made to make it work, so much fun he has missed out on with friends at home.

“It’s hard to explain to them, friends will ask if I want to do something and I’ll just say ‘three musketeers’ and they understand,” Rusadze said. “I’ve learned to manage my time well, a big commitment, a lot of late dinners, late nights doing schoolwork.”

He will have to manage his time even more this fall. With his finish at nationals, Rusadze is currently ranked to be on the U.S. national junior team with one more qualifying tournament left to determine the team that will compete in the World Cup in Istanbul in October. And he is excited to start his collegiate career at Notre Dame. Even though his father is a coach at Yale, Nickolas knew where he wanted to go.

“Notre Dame is known as the fencing school, so it was always Notre Dame for me,” Rusadze said of his college choice. “I just want to get a ring. I want to win a national championship. I like the team, I like the coaches, there was no decision, I always wanted to go there.”

It helps that he already has friends on the team at Notre Dame from Westchester, and they share a love of the sport that he knows he will carry with him for the rest of his life.

“I don’t have any regrets and I’ve grown so much as a person through this sport,” Rusadze said of fencing. “I’ve met all my best friends through this sport and I’m going to a great school because of fencing. We’re friends, but we’re competitive and you can’t be friends out on the strip. When you’re standing 2 feet in front of that person it all comes down to instinct, you have no time to aim and think, and that’s what makes it interesting and fun and I love it.”