Fencing 4/7/2022 4:45:00 PM Christina Flores-Chan

Erika Dominguez: Rams fencing's female force of power and strength

Hours before Rams fencer Erika Dominguez competed and took to the podium at the 2022 OUA championships in women's foil last month, she could feel the nerves shooting up and down her body for two big reasons.

This would not be a team event. Whereas other schools had full rosters of fencers, the Rams only had two women competing that weekend. And because stricter measures didn't allow for spectators or members of the men's team to come show their support, Dominguez was on her own.
This was her first big competition since her injury and the COVID-19 pause in sport, and a true testament to whether or not she'd been able to fully bounce back after years of grueling mental and physical recovery.

"We told ourselves not to put too much pressure on ourselves," Dominguez says, as she recalls the moments before herself and Cindy Su stepped on the mat for the event, "but we were really nervous."

The first reason, albeit a little daunting, was nothing that the fencer hadn't faced before. As the only woman training competitively on her Canadian Fencing Academy team, Dominguez had gotten used to competing alone. She'd been doing it since she first picked up the sport, at nine years old.

"I got into fencing from my uncle, because I used to be in competitive gymnastics and dance, but I wanted to do a combat sport," she says, "My club was very small and the number of girls was even smaller, I think my first class had three."

While Dominguez began to train more seriously throughout the years, she watched other young girls join the club for a few months and then leave, and she would be left alone again.

So she would spar against the boys, and slowly, they became her fencing family, competing and training alongside her today.

"They always make me feel involved and we always travel together," she says. "We support each other no matter what."

The other benefit to being the only female fencer at the club was learning to spar in a different style than other women fencers.

"Guys are really aggressive and competitive, and training with them gave me a leg up because women's foil is so slow," she says. "Taking a more aggressive approach in my event really helped me, and I learned that from them."

There was one female role model at the Academy who stayed by the fencer as she grew up, however. Dominguez's coach, Alice Lu, who also coaches the Rams, encouraged her to keep pushing, even through the toughest points in the athlete's career.

"She was there to push me back into fencing after my injury," Dominguez says.

The injury: the second mental barrier that had been plaguing the athlete's mind that championship morning and for the four years leading up to it too.

In 2018, Dominguez tore her ACL. It happened twice - the first was a partial tear, the second was a complete tearing of the ligament. She was out for a season and a half.

"When I got injured, I didn't want to do anything. All I wanted to do was stay in bed and watch television," she says, "I had no desire to get back into fencing because I felt out of shape and everyone else had surpassed me in skill level while I was out."

It was the fencer's mother and Lu who got her back on her feet.

"My mom was there to encourage me to keep working on physiotherapy and physical healing, and she reminded me how much I loved the sport," Dominguez says. "Alice helped me regain the mentality that I could get through recovery and come back better than before."

And that she did. Dominguez says that winning gold at the OUA championships was a huge confidence booster for her, advancing through the semifinals in a six-point comeback and using the momentum to steamroll through the final.

The OUA plaque she received, engraved with the names of every year's champion, now has Dominguez's name as a recent addition, alongside Canadian Olympian Kelleigh Ryan and others in the sport.

The adversity that the fencer has faced in her athletic career has not only strengthened her, but also inspired her to pursue medical science and become an MRI technician.

"When I was injured, I had to go through a lot of MRIs to monitor my healing," Dominguez says. "Major injuries can change an athlete's motivation and hope for recovery, but actually being able to see my progression through medical technology pushed me to want to get better."

Through her professional endeavours, the athlete wants to help others like her, who go through potentially career-ending injuries, to see a light at the tunnel and work towards it.

While she's still in school though, Dominguez has a part-time job giving private fencing lessons to young children. She says her hope for fencing is to see more women in the sport, and that it starts with teaching young girls the true extent of their power.

"I always wanted a team growing up, and I still wished for that at the OUAs," she says. "Girls shouldn't be discouraged from male-dominated combat sports. We're strong and powerful, and if we feel like there isn't space for us, we can carve that space for ourselves, together."

And she's right. Just look at Erika.

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Players Mentioned

Cindy Su: Graduate Student

Erika Dominguez: 1

Players Mentioned

Cindy Su
: Graduate Student

Erika Dominguez
: 1