Elif Soyer Sachs

Brandeis University

Lev BenAvram '26 repeated his Second-Team All-America honors in 2026 with a career-best fifth-place finish and claimed back-to-back Division III Saber Fencer of the Year honors.

Lev BenAvram '26 earned his third NCAA Championship selection, earning second-team honors with an eighth-place finish.
BenAvram was named Division III Men’s Saber Fencer of the Year.

Maggie Shealy '23/M’25 became Brandeis's first NCAA Fencing Champion, winning the saber title and earning national Saber Fencer of the Year honors.
Tony Escueta '25 finished eighth at nationals and was named men's Saber Fencer of the Year.
Lev BenAvram ‘26 was selected to the championships as well, but instead chose to compete internationally in an effort to qualify for the Paris Olympics.

Elif Soyer Sachs was named the men's and women's fencing coach at Brandeis University in October of 2022.
All-Division All-Americans Maggie Shealy and Tony Escueta were named Division III Sabre Fencers of the Year, while Shealy shared National Sabre Fencer of the Year honors.
Lev BenAvram qualified for the NCAA Championships, earning National Sabre Newcomer of the Year recognition.
At NCAAs, the Judges were the top Division III team in 2023, finishing 14th.

Since 2008, Sachs has served as the general manager of Moe Fencing Club in Somerville, Massachusetts. She is responsible for the business side of a club boasting over 100 members while overseeing the curriculum for weekly classes and running three annual camps.
At Moe, Sachs has coached national gold medalists in Division 1A men's foil, Y12 men's foil, and Y10 women's foil, while coaching fencers who have US National rankings at the Junior, Cadet, Senior, and Veterans levels, including fencers who successfully represented Team USA in Cadet, Junior and Vet events.
In 2005, the Northeast Fencing Conference named its award for the fencer with the best record who started fencing in college after Sachs.

Sachs served as an assistant foil coach for the Judges from 2004 to 2008. She helped the Judges send three different individuals to the NCAA championships in foil six different times.
Will Friedman '09, was a four-time qualifier, Brandeis's most recent foil All-American, and a Brandeis Hall of Fame inductee in 2025.
She also helped Brandeis earn back-to-back Northeast Fencing Conference six-weapon team titles in 2007 and 2008.
Sachs has been an assistant coach at Wellesley College from 2019 to 2021.
She served as the head coach of the men's club team and an assistant coach of the women's varsity team at Tufts between 1998 and 2004. She helped seven Tufts fencers reach the NCAA championships in her time there.
She has also coached at the Commonwealth School in Boston, producing state epee champions and finalists in all three weapons.

Sachs received her BA in economics from Emory in 1988 and an MFA from Tufts in 1997.
She is a renowned artist whose work has been reviewed by the Boston Globe.