Mika'il Sankofa

Three-time Olympian and Co-founder of The Peter Westbrook Foundation talks community empowerment, educating the next generation and mastering two gentlemen’s games

How did you begin fencing?

I started fencing when I was nine-years-old. I’m a native New Yorker. I grew up in Freeport, Long Island and I got involved in the sport by chance. I went to sign up for little league baseball, took a wrong turn and wound up in the fencing gym. I instantly fell in love with it. I broke my piggy bank, forged my mother’s signature and I was fencing the next week. And it just snowballed from there. I met a really great coach, Tanya Adamovich, a Russian woman who was on the 1972 Olympic Team. She basically took me under her wing and said, ‘Hey you have some talent, let’s try to nurture this.’ So I got better and better and one thing led to another. I went from local Long Island Championships to Regional Championships to Junior Olympics and Nationals. She took me as far as she could, then she handed me over to her coach, Csaba Elthes. He was a Hungarian maestro who was an eight-time Olympic coach and he took me under his wing and made me a National Junior Champion. I was on two Junior World teams, then went on to college at NYU. I won four NCAA titles. I was on three Olympic teams and I was the two-time National Champion.

Why did you help to found the Peter Westbrook Foundation?

During the time I was fencing, I met my partner, teamate and mentor, Peter Westbrook. That was about 19 years ago—man time flies. We had been on one or two Olympic teams together and we came up with the notion, ‘Hey we need to give back.’ We were coming to the golden part of our fencing careers and we really believed that we were either going to be a part of the solution or a part of the problem. So we started out with six kids. A friend of ours was a coach at NYU and we said, ‘Hey we need some space to get this thing going.’ And it just snowballed from there. We developed relationships with the Olympic Committee and local municipalities here in New York. We started to do demonstrations around the city to create a buzz and year by year we just grew and grew. So now almost 20 years later we’ve put about half a dozen kids on the Olympic Team and many more have gone to colleges all over the country, ranging from Duke to NYU to Columbia. We have a free tutorial program that’s available to all the kids. So we started with six and now we have about 250 kids. We have great corprate sponsors, from Pheonix Beverages to Lord and Abbett. They all help us with various internship programs. It’s just a passion that we have. We love the kids and it’s just done so much for myself and Peter. We’re looking to get even better and stronger as the years go by. And we’re using an unconventional sport—kind of like golf.

What were some of the barriers you had to overcome to get kids interested in fencing?

It was a slight hindrance but because we were men of color, many people said ‘Hey, this is interesting, this is different. Let me check this out.’ After doing it for so many years, when we do a demonstration for kids we really have a way with the crowd and everybody participates. So, for instance, if a principal invites me to a school, then ‘Guess what, Principal? You have to put a fencing suit on and go against one of the teachers.’ So everybody gets a chuckle and the kids become engaged. Initially when I started fencing, my mom said, ‘Fencing? Hitting people with swords? You’re not doing that. It sounds dangerous.’ So that’s one of the initial barriers to entry. People are just not aware of the sport, but you have to show them what it entails and the things that can come as a result of fencing—college scholarships and opportuntites to travel abroad. In fact, I have some students who are going to Budapest this week to participate in the World Cup. I should also mention, we had our first Olympic Silver Medalists at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The first two kids we started the program with, Erin and Keith Smart. They’re siblings. Keith won the silver medal in the men’s team sabre event and he was the anchor of the team. Erin won the silver medal for the women’s foil event and she was the anchor of the team. Keith is in the process of getting a graduate degree from Columbia. His sister, Erin, is a money manager at Lord and Abbet. So they’ve traveled all over the world, they’re tremendous examples and they’re like the golden children of the foundation. That said, we never looked at it as if it would be hard to convince people of color to get involved in the sport. We always said, ‘Hey, we’re involved in it. Why can’t other people of color get involved in it?’ The foundation is a real community environment. And in these really challenging economic times we offer a program which costs $25 a year. Talk about recession busting. It doesn’t get better than that.

How have the needs of kids changed over the course of the years that the Foundation has been in operation?

There’s a need for kids to be pushed in the right direction from an earlier age. One of the things about the world today is that kids can’t really be kids for too long. Now kids are thinking about college when they are in grade school. A lot of parents whose kids I teach are positionnig their kids in the sport with that thought in mind. The barriers to entry and to get good are not as high as in some other sports, like basketball or baseball. If my kid doesn’t hit the cover off of the ball so to speak, he still has a chance to get into a good school because all of the major universities have fencing programs. Fencing is hot right now. We won six medals in Beijing and everybody knows that the sport is hot. Even NBC knows—I was a commentator for the Olympics. So people want to get their kids involved. Over the course of the last 10 or 15 years we’ve realized that we have to have an educational component in our program. We’ve had some great luminaries in the fields of business and entertainment come and speak to the kids about what it takes to be successful. Russell Simmons came to the foundation and spoke to the kids. Arthur Ashe spoke to the kids before he passed away. We also have a free tutorial program, an internship program and annual essay contest every year. And we have relationships with a number of private schools. So we push the kids intellectually as well as physically. And we’ve got many success stories. One brother was a member of the Crips and we caught him just in time before he was about to go in the wrong direction. I’m happy to say he’s in college right now, he’s got a job, he’s taking care of his family and he’s still fencing. And he has aspirations to do well on an international level. We have many stories like that.

How did you start playing golf?

After I retired from competitve fencing in 1996 a friend of mine named Rothchild took me to a 9-hole course in the Bronx. So he took me out to the driving range, let me borrow one of his clubs and I couldn’t hit the ball. And this was my teammate. I used to beat him at fencing. Naturally, the competitve juices kicked in and after that I was out there three days a week just hitting balls around. Then after a few weeks of that he took me onto the course and we played 9 holes and I must have shot a 72. And I said ‘Oh no, this can’t go down.’ And from there my passion grew. So we played every week. Then we played Pelham, then Van Courtland. And from there, it was on. I got clubs made and got more and more into it. Then I found out about a course in Long Island called Bethpage Black. I played the Black, used to play the Red all the time and the Yellow. And I have some nice friends in high places now so I’ve played Shinnecock, I’ve played Long Island National, Tuxedo Park, Torey Pines and The White Witch. I’ve played all over the world and I love it.