Sada Jacobson

Sada Jacobson
Born	(1983-02-14) February 14, 1983 Rochester, Minnesota, United States
Weapon(s)	sabre
Hand	left-handed
Height	1.7 m (5 ft 7 in)
Retired	2008
FIE Ranking	rankings (archive)
Medal record Women's sabre Representing  United States Olympic Games 2008 Beijing Individual sabre 2004 Athens Individual sabre 2008 Beijing Team sabre World Championships 2000 Budapest Team sabre 2005 Leipzig Team sabre 2004 New York Team sabre 2006 Turin Team sabre 2006 Turin Individual sabre Pan American Games 2003 Santo Domingo Individual sabre

Sada Molly Jacobson^[1] (born February 14, 1983 in Rochester, Minnesota) is an American fencer. Her hometown is Dunwoody, GA. She is the 2008 Olympic Individual Sabre silver medalist and 2004 Olympic Individual Sabre bronze medalist. She has been training at Nellya fencers from a young age.

Background

Jacobson is a daughter of David Jacobson, a member of the 1974 U.S. National fencing team in saber and now an endocrinologist, and Tina Jacobson, who has also fenced competitively.^[2][3]

She is the sister of fellow U.S. Olympic team fencer Emily Jacobson and world-class fencer Jackie Jacobson.^[4]

Jacobson swam competitively for 2 years in high school.^[5] She postponed her college career to train full-time for the 2004 Summer Olympics.

She graduated the Westminster Schools in 2000. She graduated with a history degree from Morse College, Yale University. She studied history at Yale University.^[6] She began law school at the University of Michigan in the fall of 2008.^[7][8]

She has been coached by Arkady Burdan of Nellya Fencers, and Henry Hartunian at Yale.

Fencing career

College & Under-19 career

Jacobson was a 2-time NCAA sabre champion for Yale University (2001 and 2002).^[9] She won an NCAA Championship and earned 1st-team All-America honors as a freshman at Yale, after a 30–0 regular season. Jacobson was 29–1 as a sophomore, and repeated as NCAA champion. In addition, she was the 2001 Under-19 National Champion.

Senior World Championships

Jacobson is a 4-time Senior World Championships team member (2000–03). She was a member of the gold-medal 2000 Women's Sabre World Championship team at the age of 17. She won another bronze medal at the 2006 World Fencing Championships sabre competition.

In her first individual World Championships in 2001, Jacobson placed 12th. She placed 5th in 2002 and 2003.

Pan American Games

Jacobson won the gold medal in sabre at the 2003 Pan American Games.^[10]

National Championships

Jacobson won the US women's sabre championship in 2004 and 2006.^[11]

She was ranked # 1 in the US from June 2003 through October 2005.

Number 1 World Ranking

In 2004 she became the first U.S. woman to be ranked No. 1 in the world in sabre, and only the second U.S. athlete to claim the title, after male fencer Keeth Smart.^[5][12][13]

Olympic Medals

Jacobson won the bronze medal in women's sabre at the 2004 Summer Olympics, the first year that event was hosted at the Olympics.^[14] Her match took place before the gold-silver match, and therefore Jacobsen became the first women's sabre Olympic medalist.^[15][16] She won the silver medal in individual sabre^[14] and bronze in the team sabre event at the 2008 Summer Olympics.^[17]

Post-fencing career

Jacobson indicated that she intended to retire from competitive fencing after the 2008 Olympic competitions concluded, and focus on law school, and starting life with her fiance.^[18] She began her studies at the University of Michigan Law School in 2008.^[8] She and Brendan Brunelle Bâby, who graduated from Pennsylvania State University where he competed in épée and was a member of three NCAA championship teams, were married in May 2009 in Atlanta at the Nellya Fencers Club, where she had trained for both the 2004 and 2008 Summer Olympics.^[2]

Awards

• Jacobson, who is Jewish, received the Marty Glickman Award for the Outstanding Jewish Scholastic Athlete of the Year in both 2002 and 2005.^[19]
• She was named Academic All-Ivy League for the spring of 2002.
• In 2003 Jacobson was named the U.S. Fencer of the Year.
• In 2003, she was inducted in the Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, which recognizes outstanding Jewish athletes.^[20]

See also

• List of select Jewish fencers

References

• Jacobson and U.S. Teammates Take Bronze
• Jacobson Wins First Ivy Medal in Beijing

External links

• Olympic results
• Sada Jacobson at the United States Olympic Committee
• Rankings
• CNN: Olympic fencer inspires new generation
• National Jewish Sports Hall of Fame bio
• Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America from World War II to the Present: A Judaica Collection Exhibit; Sada Jacobson: Fencing Champion; by Seymour “Sy” Brody
• Jewish Virtual Library bio
• Jewish Heroes and Heroines of America from World War II to the Present: Sada Jacobson: Fencing Champion
• "Edge of Greatness"
• 2005 interview