Behind the Mask: Jake Hoyle

Although he wasn’t highly recruited out of high school, Jake Hoyle is currently one of Team USA’s best epee fencers. After walking on to the Columbia Team and winning two individual NCAA championships, Hoyle decided to continue in the sport. In 2019, he became the first U.S. men’s epee fencer to win two individual medals on the World Cup circuit during the same season since 2010, and now in 2021, he will represent the United States in Tokyo as he competes at his first Olympic Games.

JAKE HOYLE TRAVELED TO SEVERAL NATIONAL PARKS DURING THE PANDEMIC, INCLUDING GRAND TETON NATIONAL PARK.

JAKE WON BRONZE AT THE DOHA GRAND PRIX, BECOMING THE FIRST U.S. MEN’S EPEE FENCER TO WIN A GRAND PRIX MEDAL SINCE 2011.

Has it sunk in yet that you’re going to be an Olympian?

I do not think it has sunk in yet. There’s still a lot that needs to happen to get there. So I’m just focused on getting myself ready technically and physically and making sure I don’t get COVID. [Laughs]. Once my tests are negative and once I step on the plane, then I think it’ll sink in. But for now, I’m just trying to stay focused and make sure I get there in one piece.

JAKE WON BACK-TO-BACK NCAA TITLES FOR COLUMBIA IN 2015 AND 2016.

After qualifying, what have you been doing to prepare?

It’s my first Olympics, so I benefit a lot from the fact that my coach Aladar Kogler has had students so far I think in 11 Olympics, so I’ll be one of his Olympians in his 12th Olympics, so he’s seen it all. So I’m leaning on him a lot in terms of what we need to do and how much of the training is continuing what we’ve been doing for the past five years and how much is new, specific just for the Games. It’s a mix. Maybe I’ll think differently when I get back, but I kind of feel like the Olympics is just a fencing tournament, just like any other fencing tournament. I’m just preparing for it like I would for a really important fencing tournament. I’m not trying to make too crazy, wild changes … What I’ve been doing has been working. I’ve achieved very high success at international tournaments before, so preparation very similar to that.

I keep a training log of what I do every day, so normally just on the subway on my way home after a session, just in a note and write down what I did that day – how many 15-touch bouts I fenced, how long was my lesson, did I do any conditioning that day, and if so, what was it. Just quickly jot it down. And I’ve been doing that for probably eight years at this point, since I started at school at Columbia. So now in the last two months leading up to the Olympics, I’ve gone back and looked at what I was doing the two months before I won medals at a Grand Prix or World Cup, and I’m just doing that. So that’s informing what I’m doing now to see if I can replicate that prep and then that peak.

Is there anything you’ve noticed that was different in your training before some of those events when you won medals?

Yeah. Just the number of times a week that I was conditioning was something that I’m looking at here. Leading up to those, it was a higher volume of longer cardio, bike ride or rowing machine, something like that after practice that I was doing after practice. So I’m just trying to get as many of those in as I can.

You’ve said you watched the Olympics a lot growing up with your family and that going was your dream. Was there a certain point where you realized it was realistic for you?

In high school, the goal was always to get recruited to go and play DI. And then in school, the focus was doing well on the Columbia Team and being a starter, but I remember I had a conversation with Aladar at one point and … he sent me this long message, like, ‘Don’t worry. Let’s trust this process and if we work together for the next two quads, you can win an Olympic medal with me and believe that.’ And I showed it to my friend and I was like, ‘Ha, look. Aladar’s saying that he can help me win a medal. That’s pretty funny.’

And my friend just looked at me dead in the face and he was like, ‘What? What’s funny about that? You could do that.’ And I was like, ‘Huh, okay.’ [Laughs]. At that point, it became less of a maybe one day

I’ll go to the Olympic when people asked to yeah, that’s what I’m doing … It takes a very different level of internal commitment and personal commitment for you to say, ‘Yeah, that’s what I’m going for.’ Because it gives you no way out. It’s either you make it or you don’t at that point. You put a lot more pressure on yourself once you commit to that and that conversation with my coach back in probably sophomore year of college was really when I first did that.

Other than fencing, what is your favorite sport to watch at the Games?

I love watching table tennis. I used to play a lot of table tennis with my family and it’s crazy what they can do. It’s really unbelievable. It’s a completely different sport. Everyone has played ping pong. Everyone has watched ping pong, but the level at the Games is just so above and beyond anything I’ve ever witnessed. It’s really incredible.

U.S. men’s epee hasn’t had a team at the Games since 2004, but qualified a team for Tokyo. Talk to me about the focus of qualifying a team.

I think a lot of that needs to be chalked up to the Rio 2016 Olympian Jason Pryor, who made the Games individually in Rio and then came back basically outwardly saying that his sole goal for 2020 was to finally qualify a men’s epee team. That had such a huge impact. Just him saying that. When I first started on the team in early 2017 in January, when I showed up at the tournament, that’s what everyone was talking about because that’s what Jason was talking about and everyone was looking up to him. We followed his lead on that and it set a culture where you show up at a World Cup and it’s all about the team, and it’s all about qualifying the team. And you fence the individual event to put yourself in a position, but at the end of the day, right from the beginning in 2017 we were counting the FIE point differential between us and Venezuela because that’s what we thought would get us to qualify.

Every single tournament, we were busting ourselves fencing on the backside — just an absolute bloodbath on the backside – no video replay, side room, refs who are totally checked out and we’re fencing for our lives, for 12th place, to get one more FIE point than Venezuela so we could qualify. I wouldn’t really have known how important that was if he wasn’t there telling us and he was kind of like the team captain in that way. Looking back on the five years and how everything played out, those backside events were so, so, so important to our seeding and so important to put us in the position that we were in in the qualifying events: Worlds in Budapest and then Zonals and all of those World Cups that allowed us to eventually qualify … Jason took the driver’s seat and set the culture and I don’t think we would have qualified without that.

You started fencing in middle school. What was it like having fencing as part of P.E. and did you fall in love with it right away?

Having fencing in P.E. was really awesome and so unique to think about it now, but back when I was in middle school, no one really thought it was something super special. You were just like, ‘Yeah, that’s normal. We’ll play dodgeball and then we’ll learn how to play softball and then we’ll do fencing and then we’ll do swimming.’ That was just part of the routine, so we didn’t really think about it.

But to be honest with you, I always wanted to join that fencing club. I don’t know what it was, but I just knew I wanted to do that, so after I had done it in gym, then I was able to join the club. But I always knew I wanted to fence. It was great, having that club at our school, right there. I don’t know if I ever would’ve been able to fence if we didn’t just have it available in the cafeteria right after school. Pixie Roane – she runs a great club and I’ve been in touch with some of my old teammates from back then in the last few months who have reached out after I qualified and we were just reminiscing. We had so much fun. I talked to Pixie recently and she’s very proud of me and I’m planning on going back and fencing with them, with the Panther Club, in the fall. So we’re still very much in touch and connected, even after all these years.

If you had to fence foil or saber, which would you choose?

I have to choose? I can’t just quit? [Laughs]. I’d really rather quit. I would refuse.

Being not highly recruited out of high school, what did it do for you mentally to walk on to the Columbia Fencing Team and then win two individual NCAA titles?

I always had a chip on my shoulder I feel like and it’s funny how some people are viewed as frontrunners and some are not and I don’t really know why that happens, but for me, I just always felt like I had something to prove. I was a walk-on and I didn’t get a recruiting spot, so to me, when I start at school as an unrecruited walk-on, even though I believe in myself, I’m like, ‘Yeah, watch this. I’m going to be a starter. The guys you did recruit? I want to take their spot. I want to start.’

Even after I won NCAAs the first time, I remember hearing coaches and just some talk and rumors around, ‘See? You can win NCAAs because anyone can win NCAAs because Jake won NCAAs. It’s a fluke. It could happen to anyone.’ I’m like, ‘All right.’ [Laughs]. Even going into the second NCAAs, I remember there was a prediction who would make the four. I wasn’t even in there and I had won the year before. I’m like, ‘I just won this tournament and I’m not even on the list. This is ridiculous.’ [Laughs]. Chip’s back on the shoulder and now you gotta prove them wrong again. Win again. And just take that kind of stuff as motivation and it’s always worked well for me.

You didn’t go to a Senior World Cup until after you graduated. What made you keep going?

Winning NCAAs for the second time for sure. Just validation through results. Winning again, I was like, ‘All right. You’ve got something really special here. You gotta see how far you can take it.’ And I don’t know what I would have decided if I hadn’t won, but after winning again, it just wasn’t even a choice at that point.

When you won back to back medals on the circuit, how did that feel?

That was amazing. Everyone was really happy for me too, even amongst the 12 guys who travel. We’re kind of all gunning for the same spots, so we are a team and we do have camaraderie together, but we are also competitors, so it’s an interesting dynamic

that we have. But the guys were so proud of me and every single person that traveled to those events stayed the whole time to watch, all the way through the semifinals, so that felt great. I felt a lot of support from the other men’s epee fencers.

If you could fence any fencer from any weapon, any time period, who would it be and why?

I think I’m going to give you a boring answer in that I would want to fence with Pavel Kolobkov, just because he’s basically known as the greatest men’s epee fencer to ever live. So I never got a chance to be on the strip with him … He’s just such a legend. He’s won so many golds and basically everybody acknowledges that he was a cut above everyone, so I’d love to do 15 with him.

So you visited a bunch of national parks during COVID-19. Where did you road trip to?

It was great. We were in Big Sky, Montana. There’s no national park there, but we did a lot of hiking there. We were in Glacier National Park, which is practically in Canada, in Montana all the way north. We did Yellowstone National Park. We did Joshua Tree. We did Acadia up in Maine. We did Shenandoah in DC. And we did Grand Teton. We hit a lot. So part of that trip I did with just my girlfriend Leila, who I met at Columbia. She was on the track and field team. So we did a road trip up to Acadia and saw that just us and we met up with my boss and my boss’ best friend basically and that’s when we did Teton and Yellowstone and Glacier. From there, me and my girlfriend linked up with my sister and we did Joshua Tree and we drove out to Shenandoah and met up with my girlfriend’s sister. So it was just a giant road trip with a bunch of different people involved, but we got to see basically the whole country. It was great. At that time, we couldn’t train. Our clubs were closed, so we were driving on the weekends, working during the week and working out at night and doing the parks when we could. It was a lot of fun. You’d never get to do something like that. Only in a coronavirus year would that be possible … It was a good way to keep the stress low because we were speculating, ‘Are they going to cancel the Olympics? What happens if you get COVID? Are you never going to be able to compete again?’ It was just like, get out of the city. Take your mind off of it and try to distract yourself.

Where’s the top place you’d like to visit that you haven’t been to yet?

There’s a tropical paradise off the eastern coast of Africa near Madagascar called the Seychelles. There’s like eight different islands there and basically it looks like the coolest place on earth. That’s where I’d go.

CLUB: New York Athletic Club

COACH: Aladar Kogler

SCHOOL: Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in Economics / Business Management (2016)

CURRENT LOCATION: New York, N.Y. BEST RESULTS:

Bronze at the 2019 Doha Grand Prix Bronze at the 2019 Vancouver World Cup Bronze at the 2018 Pan American Championships Two-time team medalist at the Pan American Championships Two-time individual NCAA Champion

GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

Winning the bronze medal at the 2019 Doha Grand Prix

FAVORITE FENCING ITEM: His 2004 Adidas

Adistars (shoes)

JOCK OR GEEK: Jock

TRAINING REGIMEN:

Morning lesson give days per week Afternoon or evening bouting session 3-4 days per week Conditioning three days per week Strength once per week

FAVORITE DRILL:

“There is a preparation drill that I do with Aladar that he teaches all of his students. We do it at the end of every lesson, but we also do it together when we’re drilling and it’s a very basic attack, no attack drill … So it’s basically like a game. You are opening with the same preparation every time, just easy extension with advance and then you have to be relaxed enough and focused enough that no matter what he chooses to do, you’ll be able to execute it properly with no hesitation and with proper technique. It can be frustrating to learn it, but once you get really good at it, it’s actually a lot of fun and I find it to be one of the most satisfying drills that we do. I finish every lesson with it.”