University of Toronto fencer Tom Blazejewski is the type of student that makes all the rest of us jealous and anxious about our sub-par CVs. Not only is Blazejewski a successful student with high academic standing and research experience, he’s also a nationally competitive athlete.
On the academic side, Blazejewski was awarded two student-athlete prizes this year, one of which was the OUA Top Scholar award. He has been involved with research at U of T since second–year, and in third year assembled the genome of a parasite. Blazejweski will be graduating with a specialist in bioinformatics, a major in computer science, and a minor in math; he hopes to begin graduate work in bioinformatics in the fall.
While pursuing his academic success, he has also been part of the highly successful U of T men’s foil team, led by head coach Thomas Nguyen.
“I was considering going to U of T for basically my entire life,” said Blazejewski, “and [Nguyen] basically just said that he was interested in working with me. I was interested in working with him, I wanted to continue fencing because it was something I’d been passionate about for a long time.
“I think I really hit my stride when I went to the University of Toronto… Since I’ve started working with the university coach, I’ve had a lot more success.”
For Blazejewski, his first year was a big adjustment, and his individual performance was not what he had hoped for.
“In my first year, I did not do spectacularly… I think I came ninth at OUAs, but we did win team’s, so that was good.”
The team’s success continued through the next two years; they took home gold both years. In his second and third year, Blazejewski also achieved impressive results individually.
“In second year, I was second in OUAs for individual… I lost to a teammate in the final, Kyle Chan — and he was our captain… For second– and third–year we would [place] first and second each time.”
During this time, Blazejewski also attended several World Cups with the Canadian team, was named an OUA All-Star, won the Junior Eastern Championship, was ranked one of the top five fencers in Canada, and made time to coach young fencers through the Junior Blues program.
This year, Blazejewski has taken some time off from his sport.
“We’ve had several [competitions]… I haven’t attended all of them because I’ve had grad school interviews, so that’s taken up a lot of my time. So I’ve sort of stepped a little bit away from competition this year.
“At the moment, I’m taking a few months off, and then I’m going to try to come back in the second term… basically in March,” he said.
Although Blazejewski plans to begin a demanding graduate program in September, he hopes to continue fencing at a national level.
“My goal is to be competitive and somewhere ranked on the national team in Canada, and then be able to compete internationally for them next year as well. Immediately, my goal would be to get to the Pan-Am Games… And then from there it would be nice to continue being able to go to World Cups when I can, and just train to continue the progress I’d seen for the past few years.”
