Olympic gold medalist Jackie Dubrovich aims to raise the profile of fencing in the Garden State with Polaris Fencing Center, her new facility in Orange. Photo: Natalie Chitwood
Jackie Dubrovich made history last summer when she won a gold medal at the Paris Olympics as a member of the women’s foil fencing team. It was the first Olympic gold ever for a U.S. fencing team.
For Dubrovich, it was the culmination of a lifetime of dedication to the sport. A native of Riverdale, she started parrying when she was eight; by age 11, she was competing at Gutkovskiy Fencing Academy in Fair Lawn and soon medaling at the World Fencing Championships and Pan American Games. At Columbia University, she was a three-time first-team All-American and won three NCAA tournament and two team medals.
Though she’s now retired from competition, Dubrovich’s passion for fencing shows no sign of waning. In November, the 30-year-old Maplewood resident opened Polaris Fencing Center in Orange with her former coach and now husband, Brian Kaneshige.
The two met in Slovakia when they were teenagers competing in the Junior World Cup. Kaneshige, 31, grew up in Maplewood and started fencing at age eight at Durkan Fencing Center in South Hackensack. He was on three cadet and junior world-championship teams, the Olympic team, and was a four-time All-American at Harvard University. In 2020, he switched from competing to coaching the U.S. Olympic team, including his then girlfriend, Dubrovich. He’s now a fencing coach at NYU.
The couple, who married in November, had long dreamed of opening a fencing center together. As luck would have it, the ideal property came on the market while Dubrovich was competing and Kaneshige was coaching in Paris.
“It was all happening behind the scenes while I was at one of the biggest events of my life,” says Dubrovich. “We learned our first lesson as small-business owners; you can plan all you want, but unforeseen things will happen.”
The couple’s decades of competitive fencing gave them a blueprint for Polaris’s renovation.
“We thought, What were we missing at our respective clubs?” says Dubrovich. Polaris, in an industrial building formerly used by a pest-control company to dispatch trucks, now has shock-absorbing sprung floors, which are easier on athletes’ joints, and buried wiring to prevent entanglements. Wall targets allow for solo practicing.
Currently, Polaris offers introductory and beginner programs, as well as competitive programs for seasoned fencers. Both Dubrovich and Kaneshige are teaching.
They aim to foster a love of the sport rather than a win-at-all-costs mentality. “You’ll find a lot of burnout in American fencing,” Kaneshige says. “A lot of clubs put too much emphasis on competition. We want them to fence because they love it.”
The couple also aims to grow fencing in the area and are in early talks with the Orange public schools to help develop a middle school fencing program. Eventually, they hope to offer financial aid, since fencing’s high cost makes it prohibitive for the less privileged.
“As my competitive career ends, I’m thinking, What kind of legacy do I want to leave?” Dubrovich says. “Teaching and giving back is a beautiful way to stay involved in the sport.”
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