It was watching his older brother Vance that first sparked Elden's interest in fencing. He picked up the sabre — and never looked back. What started as curiosity quickly became obsession. He put in more hours than anyone in the family, showed up to practice when others didn't, and kept pushing long past the point where most kids move on to something else. The kid who started because his brother made it look cool became the athlete who took it further than anyone expected.
Elden Wood started fencing in 2010 at just six years old, and now — 15+ years later — he's an NCAA All-American at the University of North Carolina and one of the most decorated college sabre fencers in the country.
His journey began at the Manhattan Fencing Center, where he trained for a decade. He first learned the craft under coach Andrew Lamienski — a former Belarusian National Champion — then developed his elite game under the legendary Yury Gelman — founder of MFC, five-time Olympic coach, and an inductee of the Olympic Hall of Fame. Training under coaches at that level from a young age gave Elden a technical and tactical foundation that most fencers never get.
Over more than a decade of elite training, Elden has attended an estimated 15+ fencing camps across 4 US states and training sessions in 4 countries — doing at minimum one winter camp and one summer camp every year since he began. He started competing locally in the NY/NJ area — including early NJFA events and Steve Sobel regional tournaments — before steadily working his way up to NACs and national competition. This level of off-season commitment is rare and reflects something simple: he just genuinely loves the sport and the grind.
At UNC, he's been guided by head coach Matt Jednak — a UNC alum himself who won his first ACC team title in 2024 and was named ACC Men's Coach of the Year that season. His sabre coaching at UNC has rotated through elite assistants: Ahmed Hamdy Refaee (2023-24), who coached Egypt's National Team and brought a bronze medal from international competition, and Sherif Mohamed Elbakry (2024-present), a former Egyptian Sabre National Team member (1988-1996) who served as Head of the Arab Coaches Committee at the Egyptian Fencing Federation. At every stage, Elden has worked with some of the finest sabre minds in the world.
His resume speaks for itself: a 2022 Summer Nationals silver medal Div I — 2nd in the nation competitors — making him the #2 Div I Men's Sabre fencer in the country that day — a Junior Olympics bronze, a 2021 Cadet NAC title, and a USA Fencing A23 rating earned at the national level. In college, he's been All-Region three times, earned All-American honors in 2025, and was named ACC Men's Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Fencing runs deep in the Wood family — and that's no accident. His mom Katia Schlienger fences, his dad Jeremy Wood fenced in college, and his brother Vance Wood was captain of the Men's Sabre squad at Johns Hopkins from 2018 to 2021. This isn't just a sport for the Woods. It's the family language. And the father-son chess matches with Jeremy? Those were part of the training too — sharpening the same tactical mind that shows up every time Elden steps on the strip.
