Princeton native and Princeton High School graduate Thomas Kolasa placed sixth in the men’s saber event at the 26th annual SISTA-SFZ Cup international fencing tourney in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on Sunday, Sept. 24.
Organized by the International Fencing Federation, the Cup featured 39 competitors from 19 countries on five continents.
An internationally ranked sabreur, Kolasa was seeded sixth entering the event and won all six of his bouts in the first round, outscoring opponents from Colombia, Poland, Austria, Belgium, and the Netherlands by a total of 15 touches in the round-robin group.
Seeded fourth after the first round, Kolasa defeated Jadryn Dick of Australia, 15-12, to make the top 16 and then Tomasz Pytel of Poland, 15-12, to make the finals before falling to eventual silver medalist Nicola Guarnaccia of Italy, 15-9. Another Italian, Francesco d’Armiento, won the event.
Aside from international competition, Kolasa, 26, competed for Harvard at the NCAA Championship, earned First Team All-Ivy Honors, and helped lead the men’s team to an Ivy League title.
Kolasa hails from a fencing family, with a brother, Matthew, who also competed internationally and a sister, Natalie, who this year takes the helm of Lafayette College’s varsity team and at 24 is fencing’s youngest NCAA Division 1 head coach.
Thomas Kolasa’s next event will be an FIE cup in London on October 29th.
