THE BEGINNING OF JAMEER'S FENCING STORY:
Jameer's fencing story began at the age of 12 for the Peter Westbrook Foundation, which is a not-for-profit organization that uses the sport
of fencing to enrich the lives of young people from underserved communities in the New York Metropolitan Area. At first, Jameer didn't really
like practicing fencing or even going to the Peter Westbrook Foundation but, he slowly started to like it over time. In the beginning of the
2019-20 fencing season, Jameer started going to Thrust Fencing Academy, located in Nyack, NY, who Jameer is trained by Mika'il Sankofa, a
three time sabre olympian for the US. During this time, Jameer was training for fencing more than he did the following season and slowly and
started competively fencing during Feburary of 2020 where he competed in his first competition.
Despite all of this, Jameer was still pretty
bad at the sport and had to train and do more work to get better.
THE PRESENT STORY OF JAMEER'S FENCING CAREER:
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Jameer's mother wouldn't allow Jameer to play basketball with his friends and would only allow Jameer to
go to fencing practice. This opened up a brand new opportunity for Jameer. Starting in September of 2020, Jameer would go onto practice
fencing from Tuesday to Saturday almost every week at his club and would slowly start to get better and eventually, getting caught up to all
of the other kids that were around his age category. During the spring of 2021, Jameer started loving the sport so much that he eventually
quit basketball, a sport that Jameer had been playing for his entire life, and started to go to a lot of competitions. Unexpectedly, on the first
day of May, Jameer qualified for his first fencing nationals for Y-14, and about three weeks later, he did the same thing but this time for DIV2
and DIV3. But as soon as Jameer was going beyond his limits and catching fire, Jameer unfortunatly suffered a severe left-hamstring
sprain which destroyed his confidence physically and mentally, and he was also not performing the same as he was prior to the hamstring sprain.
But that did not matter to Jameer. Despite the left-hamstring sprain, Jameer continuted to practice, getting ready to compete at his first
national event. During the national event, Jameer did not do well in his three events. Currenly, Jameer took some time off to rest his injury
and is training to strengthen his hamstring. Jameer is looking forward to starting off strong for the 2021-22 season.
