Multi-awarded former UE Red Warriors Girls’ Fencing Team standout Samantha Kyle L. Catantan has qualified for the 2024 Olympics!
She has become the first Filipino fencer in 32 years to qualify for the Olympics, after ruling the just concluded Women’s Foil event of the Asia-Oceania Zonal Olympic Qualifier.
The event was held on April 27, 2024, at Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, where Miss Catantan edged Kazakhstan’s Sofiya Aktayeva, 15-14, in the final. Samantha’s match may be viewed within the 22:00 and 56:00 marks of this video: //www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuEyQdZEuMg
This victory of Miss Catantan’s means that she will be seeing world-stage fencing action at the 2024 Summer Olympics (a.k.a. the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad and Paris 2024), which will be held from July 26 to August 11, 2024, in France.
More about Miss Catantan’s Olympic pre-qualifier victory through these news stories…
//www.rappler.com/…/fencing-results-samantha…/
//inqnews.net/Spt427242
Miss Catantan is joined in the UAE by a small contingent led by Coach Rolando T. Canlas Jr. as Philippine Fencing Association (PFA) Program Adviser and Coach.
Touted by the PFA as the number 1 foil fencer in the Philippines, the multi-awarded Red Warrior Fencer Miss Catantan is currently an accounting student at Pennsylvania State University, where she is part of the varsity fencing team, the Nittany Lions.
Miss Catantan had earned her Senior High School diploma, With Honors, as an Accountancy, Business and Management strand graduate of the UE Basic Education Department-Manila, during UE Manila’s first ever virtual SHS Commencement Rites on November 14, 2020.
During her stint with the UE Red Warriors Girls’ Fencing Team, Miss Catantan helped steer the squad to consecutive championships in the girls’ division of the annual University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) fencing tournaments, and was the consecutive Most Valuable Player awardee in the fencing girls’ division of UAAP seasons 78, 79, 80, 81 and 82. She was also the Rookie of the Year for the same division of UAAP season 77.
She had earned a silver medal in women’s foil in the 29th Southeast Asian Games (SEAG) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in August 2017. More recently, she won a bronze medal in women’s foil in the 30th SEAG in the Philippines, in December 2019. In 2022, she won the gold medal in women’s foil in the 31st SEAG in Hanoi, Vietnam, and the silver medal in the same event in the 32nd SEAG in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in 2023.
In terms of academics, Miss Catantan was a Bagong Rizal awardee via the 2017 search for “Mga Bagong Rizal: Pag-asa ng Bayan” by the Philippine Center for Gifted Education, one of only 17 such awardees from all over the Philippines formally recognized in November that year.
Congratulations, Warrior Fencer Samantha Catantan! Best wishes on reaching for your Olympic dream! We in your Alma Mater and your home country are extremely proud of you!
Photo by the International Fencing Federation (FIE)
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