A few years ago, Nzingha Prescod was training to qualify for her third Olympic games. But this summer, instead of competing in Tokyo, she’ll be teaching the sport to children in and around Brooklyn through her program Fencing in the Park.
She was still training at a world-class level when a painful hip injury forced her to retire at 27 from the sport that has been her life since she was nine years old. Although it was a disappointment, Prescod had been thinking about what her life would look like after her professional fencing career.
She knew she wanted to stay in fencing and find a way to give back to her community and share what she learned from the sport with the next generation.