Penn fencer Katina Proestakis poses with her blade in the Hutchinson Gymnasium.
Credit: Gabriel JungIt’s school first and Olympics second for junior foilist Katina Proestakis Ortiz, who represented Chile in the 2020 Olympic Games before ever donning the Red and Blue.
“Stepping on the Olympic strip with the lights on really feels like a stage,” she said. “The room is super bright, but then everything else around you is just dark, so you can't see anything except the person in front of you, the referee, and your coach.”
Proestakis Ortiz placed 34th in the individual women’s foil in Tokyo, and aside from the competition, she appreciated the learning opportunity of training with some of the best fencers in the world. She hopes to return to the Olympics again before she stops fencing.
“Walking in the opening ceremony felt so unreal,” she said. “And going to the dining halls and meeting these athletes that I watched on TV growing up was just a crazy experience.”
Some might assume Proestakis Ortiz made it to the Olympic stage by prioritizing her sport above all else, but she prefers a more balanced approach.
“Academics always comes first, but fencing is a close runner up,” she said. “I have three to four hours of the day that are just blocked for training.”
After trying fencing for the first time at the age of seven, Proestakis Ortiz knew she wanted to continue the sport in college and walked on to the team during her freshman year at Penn.
Reflecting back on her competition seasons, she highlighted making it to the NCAA Championships last year and the Ivy League Championships both her freshman and sophomore year, where she recalls being extremely nervous alongside her teammate, senior foilist Sabrina Cho, and the pair hyping each other up before their bouts.
Assistant coach Brennan Louie described Proestakis Ortiz as a “fearless” athlete and added that she approaches every bout with “blinders and a full heart,” no matter how big her opponent is.
“She's a bit of a perfectionist, but she really does take the time to study her opponents, come up with a plan, and, and she brings that intensity off the strip too,” he said. “When her other teammates are fencing, she's always there screaming her heart out and shouting out information that could be useful to the team.”
In addition to the NCAA, Proestakis Ortiz competes on the international circuit with a small group of Penn fencers and has attended tournaments in places like Shanghai and Busan, South Korea. Outside of competitions, Proestakis Ortiz is grateful for the people she’s met through the sport.
“The fencing community is not that big, so there's a lot of names that we usually recognize, but don't necessarily know,” she said. “So, I think actually meeting those names as people and not just as fencers has definitely been one of the highlights. It's really like a fancy family.”
Proestakis Ortiz is excited to be back on campus with that family after taking a gap semester this past fall to work on her training. Louie praised her seamless transition back into taking a full load of classes on top of training, crediting her “electric” energy.
“She keeps everybody around her in high spirits,” he said. “In terms of what she brings to the team, she’s a high level athlete with a very humble heart because she’s an Olympian, but you'd never be able to tell looking at how she treats her teammates and other athletes.”
At the Ivy League championships this past weekend, Proestakis Ortiz helped lead the team to its first Ivy title in two decades, finishing fourth in the foil and garnering second-team All-Ivy honors. This brings Proestakis Ortiz one step closer to her goal of qualifying for NCAA Nationals this season, which would require her to go to NCAA Regionals next month.
With the Olympics coming up again this summer, Proestakis Ortiz has high hopes to compete once more. She has two competitions coming up that count towards qualification, one in Cairo and another in Washington.
“Maybe if I do really, really well, then it could be a possibility to make it to the Paris Olympics,” she said. “But, I'll just say one competition at a time and see how that goes.”
After college, Proestakis Ortiz plans on trying to compete in the 2028 Olympics, but anticipates taking a little time off from fencing right after graduation. Louie is optimistic about Proestakis Ortiz's odds of making it to Paris this summer and highlighted the mental aspect of the sport as a main focus of their preparation.
“We’re going to get into some sports psychology kind of principles in terms of having her be her best self on the floor every time,” he said. “When it is an Olympic year, it's hard to stay consistent, especially with how many competitions there will be for the Olympic season as well as NCAA. But she’s got it: She’s built for this.”
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