The Late-Game Player

Alyssa Pan isn’t someone who naturally talks about herself.

Ask her about fencing, and she shrugs it off. “I’m not very talented,” she says.

“The first time I won a championship, it was because the stronger competitors didn’t show up.”

She speaks about it softly, with a shy smile, as if the medals she’s accumulated over the years belong to someone else.

From training to competition, from being noticed by a coach to applying as a student-athlete, Alyssa’s path has been long and deliberate. In the early decision round, she was admitted to Wellesley College, ranked among the top liberal arts colleges in the United States. But if you didn’t ask, she likely wouldn’t mention it.

She once described herself as “ivy”: something that needs a wall to climb.

But fencing is different. On the piste, there is no wall to lean on. From age eight to eighteen, it has always been one bout after another. Win, and you reset. Lose, and you wait for the next.

Choosing to defend

Fencing is often described as a balance between elegance and violence. Among its three disciplines, épée—the one Alyssa chose—is the most demanding in patience and judgment. It’s a heavy weapon, and the entire body is its valid target. There is no “right of way.” Whoever lands the first hit scores.

It’s slower, quieter: less about speed, more about anticipation.

For her, that slowness mattered. It gave her space to hesitate, and more importantly, space to come back.

She began in the summer of 2016, entering her second year at Keystone, trying swimming, table tennis, and other sports before choosing fencing simply because it felt “novel and interesting”. Early on, she trained in large group classes two or three times a week, never the most dedicated, never the weakest. Her first win came almost accidentally—an internal club competition in fifth grade.

“I didn’t even realize what I was doing,” Alyssa said. “Later, watching the footage, I noticed I kept repeating the same move.”

But something shifted after that.

“It was like a revelation. I started wanting to train more seriously.”

Still, she never became an aggressive fencer.

“I’m not good at attacking,” she said. “So I play the second half. I wait for my opponent, then defend and counter.”

In épée, waiting is tactical. If you’re ahead, you can afford to wait. You let your opponent grow impatient, make mistakes, and expose openings. If neither side attacks for a long time, the referee will show a black card (or a warning) to the person with the lower score.

But waiting comes at a cost. It means enduring pressure and making split-second decisions: hold or strike.

“I hesitate,” she admitted. “My coach shouts, ‘Go! Don’t hesitate!’ But in my head I’m thinking—why didn’t I take that last opportunity?”

Under the mask, she hesitates. From the outside, her coach sees something else entirely.

“She has natural timing,” Coach Jiang said. “She’s a competition athlete.”

Alyssa puts it more simply:

“I rely on instinct. I may not train as much as others, but there are a few moves I’ve practiced until they’re automatic.”

The contradiction holds: a hesitant fencer who can overturn a match. Her waiting is not retreat, but a strategy she chose.

Wanting to win

There was a match in ninth grade that stayed with her. At the 16th Beijing Municipal Games in 2022, expectations were high. She had been performing well; a gold medal could earn her a certification of China’s first-grade athlete. Everyone thought she would win.

She lost in the first round, to her best friend.

Their playing styles clashed: Alyssa played too hastily. Her strikes were always just a bit off. The score gradually widened until the final thrust, when the lights didn’t come on for her. The result disappointed her parents and coach. Alyssa could only remember what she felt then.

“I didn’t think much of it at first,” she said. “But when everyone else started expecting something from me, losing made it feel heavier.”

She never spoke of this weight to anyone. After that, she stopped taking matches lightly.

“I want to play well in every match,” she told herself.

That desire followed her everywhere—during training, the night before competitions, even as she stepped onto the piste. It tightened around her like a wire.

“That was the first time I realized that wanting to win is exhausting.”

Over time, she came to understand something else: fencing is not purely about strength. Styles clash. Outcomes depend on matchups, timing, and even luck.

“Sometimes you win because you happen to counter your opponent. Sometimes you lose for the same reason.”

Her coach put it bluntly: luck can account for half.

That realization reshaped how she saw victory and defeat. She didn’t inflate herself after a win, nor diminish herself after a loss.

“If someone counters me,” she said calmly, “then maybe it’s just not my day.”

What she developed instead was balance: an internal steadiness that doesn’t depend on results.

Not loud confidence, but quiet endurance.

In sports psychology, there’s a concept known as adversity coping ability, or the capacity to sustain performance when behind, injured, or out of form. It’s not something easily trained. More often, it comes from an internal steadiness.

Alyssa’s confidence sits quietly, closer to instinct than display. Over time, she also stopped talking much about her results.

“I don’t like being put on a pedestal,” she said. “It feels uncomfortable.”

She consciously recognized and accepted that she wasn’t a particularly aggressive person, and then turned this “non-aggressiveness” into her advantage—she defended, waited, and attacked when her opponent showed a weakness.

A life of fragments

Alyssa wasn’t the type to cram everything into a schedule, down to the exact minute, but training reshaped her time. By ninth grade, her weekly schedule had settled into a fixed rhythm: training sessions midweek and on weekends, with everything else arranged around them.

She never described it as “balance”.

“I just adjust based on what needs to be done.”

In her days, segmented into classes, training, homework, and sleep, she also learned to use the in-between: studying on high-speed trains, reviewing notes between matches, mentally rehearsing tasks on the ride back from the fencing hall.

“I’m used to it,” she said. “It’s tiring, but normal.”

Yet, she didn’t drop everything else. She played the ruan (a traditional Chinese stringed instrument) in the Yunyin Orchestra. She also joined the Keystone Yearbook team. In her eleventh grade, she became a student leader responsible for coordination. This role carried many small tasks, but Alyssa delivered them meticulously and on time.

Keystone Yearbook team advisor and Associate Dean of the Teaching and Learning Center, Michael Wang, described her as someone with “a gentle kind of strength”.

“She is methodical, and you can feel a strength behind her—not forceful, not aggressive, but very trustworthy,” Mr. Wang added.

Her friends noticed something else: she could switch modes instantly. One moment relaxed, the next focused, already working through a problem.

She rarely spoke about effort. But those around her saw it clearly.

Alyssa designed logos for the student dormitory and an advisory group called “Gong Cai Gang” (贡菜帮).

Jason Roy, her math teacher and advisor, saw her warmth and initiative.

“A lot of students are friendly, and a lot of students are active, but Alyssa is someone who gets things going,” Mr. Roy shared. “She is good at bringing people in, making things fun, and giving a group energy. She does not just have nice ideas, but she follows through on them.”

When longer commitments aren’t possible, she turns to smaller acts. Volunteering becomes the space where she shows up: organizing donations at Roundabout, helping with fundraising for Operation Smile, and coordinating logistics at the Creativity, Activity, Service (CAS) Fair.

Her attention to people works subtly, rarely stated. She notices when something is off, but doesn’t press. Instead, she might suggest a walk, shift the mood without naming it.

Her close friend Mia Cheng once described Alyssa as holding a “dialectical unity of maturity and naivety.”

“She manages her life with precision—sometimes even better than I manage mine,” Mia said. “But then there are moments where she’ll pause over something we all take for granted and ask about it, as if seeing it fresh.”

Fencing occupied most of Alyssa’s weekends. The tradeoff was her bonding time with Keystone classmate and friends. Yet, on several afternoons when she trained, some friends, including Nina Qu, would wait for her outside the fencing room. They would walk back to school together, returning to their nook they call “West Third” (or a nickname for a school in Taiwan).

The hardest shortcut

Choosing the student-athlete path wasn’t immediate. “At first, I didn’t plan to apply that way,” she said. “It was only when my results were close to the standard that I started to consider it.”

The U.S. college system formalizes this path through the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which divides schools into three divisions. Divisions I and II allow athletic scholarships; Division III operates on a different premise: the athlete is a student first. Academic expectations remain high, and sport sits within—not above—the educational experience.

After an intensive stretch of competitions in Grades 8 and 9, Alyssa continued competing the following year—this time with a clearer purpose. Alongside training and tournaments, she began compiling her results, videos, and application materials, sending them to as many college coaches as possible.

Coaches who showed interest requested transcripts and scheduled interviews, before forwarding her profile to their admissions offices. A “green light” from admissions meant the coach could formally support her application.

Alyssa applied during the Early Action/Early Decision round and waited. But even after securing recruiting interest, the process didn’t pause. Throughout the IB Diploma Programme, she continued competing—maintaining her ranking in domestic club leagues while regularly updating coaches with new results.

Over months of communication, the strongest and most consistent signals came from Division III programs.

A coach made that clear early on: “You don’t need more competitions. Focus on your exams. Send me your transcripts.”

But that didn’t make the process more complex. She had to meet two systems at once: academic standards for admission, and competitive performance strong enough to secure a coach’s support. And between the two sat a process of mutual selection.

Even then, nothing was guaranteed.

For international applicants, expectations stretch further—results alone aren’t enough. Coaches want to see performance in person, often requiring travel abroad.

In the summer of 2024, she competed in a national event organized by USA Fencing, finishing 55th out of several hundred competitors. The path is uncertain by design.

As Mr. Percy Jiang, Keystone’s Director of College Counseling, put it: the hardest parts are often invisible: conflicting schedules, injury risks, unclear feedback, the constant uncertainty of where you stand. Alyssa understood this early.

For her, the biggest challenge in applying to sports-related colleges and academic programs lies in the different evaluation systems. In academic admissions, grades in activities and essays build over time. In athletic recruitment, everything can hinge on a single competition.

“Sometimes it all comes down to one match,” Alyssa said. “You need results, but also something to show—your execution, your form.”

One poor performance can undo months of work. Between 2022 and 2025, she competed in more than thirty tournaments.

“Every match feels tense,” she said. “You think, ‘What if this is the one that goes wrong?’”

At times, the pressure overwhelmed her. She admitted she had cried.

“But you’re already there. So you compete.”

She rarely spoke about that weight.

“You just deal with it yourself.”

At the same time, she was choosing as much as being chosen. Coaches assessed fit—but she did the same: training culture, academic flexibility, team dynamics.

“I wasn’t just looking for an offer,” she said. “I was asking whether I could stay there for four years.”

She wanted to be seen beyond fencing, but she knew fencing was what opened the door. Being “selected” came with its own tension: recognition, but partial.

“It narrows your options,” she said. “You’re not applying everywhere. You’re choosing within a smaller set.”

Her experiences abroad clarified something else: her own limits.

She sent her résumé widely and heard back from several schools. Wellesley College, Tufts University, Vassar College, University of California San Diego, and Denison University all expressed clear interest.

But her experiences at summer programs and competitions abroad sharpened her sense of fit. Large, sprawling campuses felt less appealing. She found herself drawn instead to smaller, more intimate academic communities.

“I’m a pretty introverted person,” she said. “If there are too many people, professors might not notice me—and I probably wouldn’t speak up. I need small classes, where professors can really connect with me.”

In the end, she chose Wellesley College.

Choosing the wall

Founded in 1870, Wellesley College has long been associated with a particular idea of women’s education, one tied to leadership, independence, and public life.

Its motto, Non Ministrari sed Ministrare, frames service not as an obligation, but as a purpose. From Soong Ching-ling and Bing Xin to Hillary Clinton and Madeleine Albright, Wellesley’s alumni list is an answer in itself.

For Alyssa, though, the decision wasn’t about reputation alone. Only during the recruitment process did she begin to look closely at the fencing program, the training rhythm, and the academic structure.

What drew her in was harder to quantify.

“It’s quiet,” she said. “Not showy.”

Something in that felt familiar.

At Wellesley, fencing would become part of a team, one with its own history, competing within the NCAA structure, shaped over decades. She wouldn’t just continue the sport; she would enter into something already in motion.

At the same time, its broader values aligned with questions she had been carrying for years, particularly around inequality.

She had seen it up close through volunteer work, including two trips to Nepal. On the second, her team built a library.

“Teaching helps,” she said. “But it’s limited. A library stays.”

One moment from that trip stayed with her.

There was another moment from that trip that stayed with her.

After a three-hour hike followed by an exhausting journey, Alyssa and her classmates rested in the dining hall. That was when she noticed a Ukrainian classmate sitting quietly, tears slipping down her face.

Alyssa shared what she saw with two fellow student leaders, Daisy Wang and Tina Qiu. Together, they arrived at a difficult realization: they had chosen to be there. But for their classmate, home was no longer something she could simply return to.

“We can’t let this night end in sadness,” they agreed.

The three of them began to plan. They found a traditional Ukrainian hymn and spoke with their teacher about what they could do. Later that evening, after most students had returned to their rooms, they ordered three small servings of vanilla ice cream and asked the restaurant manager to play the song.

It was a small gesture—but a deliberate one.

“We still remember their expressions,” she said. “Smiling, even while crying.”

That’s how she thinks about inequality—not as an abstraction, but as something lived unevenly.

“I’ve had support, resources, opportunities,” she said. “But not everyone does. What I want is to change that at a structural level.”

Not all change comes from visibility. Sometimes it comes from proximity.

At the 2024 International School Sport Federation (ISF) Gymnasiade in Bahrain, where she represented China, she stepped into a different role: translating, coordinating, filling gaps where needed.

In one instance, when a teammate’s weapon was mistakenly taken and no translator was available, she intervened directly, navigating the situation until it was resolved.

No one assigned her the role. She stepped into it. “That’s just what a team should feel like,” she said.

Over time, those shared moments formed something harder to define but easy to recognize. Not just teammates, but a system of mutual response.

Waiting, then striking

The night her admission result came out, she checked the time wrong.

“I waited forty minutes,” she said. “By then, the emotions had settled.”

She opened the letter.

“Nothing dramatic. Just… a calm blue.”

Even after acceptance, she worried about exams, about maintaining her performance.

What unsettled her more, though, was how people misunderstood student-athletes.

“I’ve invested a lot into fencing,” she said. “While others were studying, I was training. Being admitted this way—it’s something I earned.”

Now, she’s less concerned with outside opinions.

“Everyone has their own path. Others don’t necessarily see the effort behind balancing both.”

She paused, then added:

“You just need to stay clear about your choices, and keep going.”

People tend to celebrate certainty, and even the athletes who never doubt and stand confidently at the top.

But most journeys look more like hers: hesitation, pressure, quiet persistence.

Strength, in her case, isn’t the absence of fear but about acting despite it. This resilience isn’t innate, but honed through countless wins and losses.

At the end of the interview, she was asked whether she had a better metaphor than ‘ivy’.

She thought for a moment.

“No,” she said. “Still ivy.”

Then she added: “But I chose the wall myself.”

“I’m someone who plays the second half. I wait and then strike.”