Westbrook’s condition comes with doctor’s orders: He is not supposed to move in a way that jostles his liver. That would not stop him.
“Hell, no,” Westbrook said by phone Sunday night, chuckling at the question. “I did jumping jacks.”
A rising senior at Harvard from Queens, Scruggs won the silver medal in the women’s foil at the Paris Olympics. After her semifinal victory clinched a medal, Scruggs covered her face with her right arm, one of the few moments of stillness all day. She fenced with audacity and performed with sheer confidence, setting the terms against bigger, more experienced opponents, screaming after points and exhorting family members in the crowd.
Scruggs lost only to fellow American Lee Kiefer, who defended her gold medal from Tokyo with a 15-6 victory in the final. Before Kiefer claimed gold at the Tokyo Olympics, the United States had never won an individual medal in women’s foil. On Sunday, Americans took gold and silver. Kiefer became the second American woman after Mariel Zagunis to win two fencing golds.
Scruggs made the kind of history that could have lasting impact. Westbrook recalled more Black men entering the sport after he won his bronze medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. He sees the same effect coming after Scruggs’s triumph. “They tried fencing because of me,” Westbrook said. “They’re going to try fencing because of Lauren.”
“Fencing has largely certainly been a non-Black sport,” Scruggs said. “I hope that people who look like me, girls who look like me, feel they have a place in this sport.”
Scruggs started fencing at about age 7. Her brother, Nolen, loved Star Wars as a kid and viewed fencing as his way to duel with a lightsaber. Their mother spotted an ad for a local club and signed him up. Nolen wanted to quit after a few lessons, but their mother already had paid for the equipment and wouldn’t allow it. Scruggs kept tagging along.
Scruggs realized she was good right away. Today, she views the barriers to expanding the pool of fencers as both financial and cultural. It is an expensive sport associated with prep schools and the Ivy League. Black kids who sign up at a club may not see people who look like them.
“From a young age, I really had to prove myself to get respect,” Scruggs said. “It’s the little things. Maybe no one’s cheering for you, things like that.”
As she won tournaments, her stepdad, who is White, contacted Westbrook through her coach, Sean McClain. In Westbrook’s recollection, Scruggs’s stepfather wanted Westbrook to provide a Black male influence for her.
Westbrook accepted Scruggs into the Peter Westbrook Foundation, which Westbrook started in 1991 to support and mentor underrepresented youth through fencing. More than 4,000 kids have come through the program, which touts a 100 percent graduation rate. Scruggs still returns every Saturday when she is home from Harvard to volunteer and coach. When she walked onto the piste Sunday morning, Scruggs became the 17th Olympian produced by Westbrook’s foundation.
Through Scruggs was an Olympic rookie, she arrived with a full résumé. She won the 2020 junior world championship and the 2023 NCAA title. She has been an all-American all three years of her college career and entered the Olympics ranked 11th in the world.
Just 21, Scruggs refused to back down. She attacked every match, every point with confidence derived from growing up in New York City. She locked in before bouts by blasting music in her headphones. She danced across the piste in bright red shoes. During one timeout, she sipped a bottle of Coca-Cola — “sugar and caffeine,” she said.
In the round of 16, Scruggs beat Canadian Jessica Guo, the Harvard teammate who beat her in the NCAA title match this year. After she won, Scruggs slashed the air with her weapon, then pressed her face into a television camera on the corner of the piste and screamed into the lens. In her boldness, Scruggs carried Westbrook’s presence to Paris.
“A lot of the energy you saw tonight is the energy he tells us to bring at the tournaments,” Scruggs said. “He’s a very energetic guy. A lot of charisma and machismo. So I brought that energy today. I was thinking about him while I was fencing.”
For a moment, it appeared Scruggs had been eliminated. In a heart-racing quarterfinal, Scruggs seized an 8-2 lead over world No. 2 Arianna Errigo of Italy, then watched it wither to 14-14. The next point would win. Scruggs and Errigo lunged at one another, and as is constantly the case in fencing, it was unclear who struck first. The judge awarded Errigo the match.
Scruggs pulled off her mask and pointed at the replay screen on an end wall, certain the attack had been hers. Errigo celebrated, equally certain. Judges reviewed the point. The head referee brought the fencers to the center and notified them they had reversed the call. Errigo dropped to her knees and shrieked at the judges. Scruggs dropped her mask and raised her foil, pacing toward the far corner where her family was sitting.
The victory pushed Scruggs to an epic stage. When introduced during the medal rounds, fencers emerged from behind an arched wooden door, waved their weapons from a gilded balcony and traipsed 50 steps down a curved staircase made of stone. They walked through a tunnel to a piste under a spotlight, 150 feet beneath the great glass dome. When fencers scored, neon lights on their side of the floor glowed.
In the semifinal, Scruggs dominated Canadian Eleanor Harvey. After fencing to a 5-5 tie, Scruggs won seven straight points and won, 15-9. Scruggs pulled off her mask. She had clinched a medal, one that one man understood more than anyone else could.
“When you do something like that, man, there’s so many layers,” Westbrook said. “You do it for your country. You do it for your sport. You do it for Black people. You’re uplifting so many different levels.”
At the medal ceremony, Scruggs stood on the podium and placed her right hand over her heart. She stared at the American flag as “The Star-Spangled Banner” played. She had won a medal that may inspire people who look like her to follow. She had uplifted a sick man she knows well and loves very much.
“Oh, my gosh,” Westbrook said from back in New York. “I’m just so proud.”
