In 2020, Denver Fencing Center founder Nathan Anderson had a breakthrough.
He'd won a $20,000 grant to turn his gym, right across the street from Ruby Hill Park, into a national hub for wheelchair swordplay.
It was enough to buy all the gear he needed to train athletes worthy of elite competition. All that was left was to find someone who'd go the distance.
When he spoke to us about it back then, he said he dreamt of taking someone to the 2024 Paralympics in Paris. But he wasn't sure that was in the cards. Four years wasn't long to whip his new program into that kind of shape.
As Anderson tried to convince some rising athletes to move here and help him secure a medal, he also ramped up local outreach, inviting groups of people recovering from limb loss and from hospitals to come see what the sport was like.
That's how Jataya Taylor — usually just "J" — ended up in his gym. She'd never seen adaptive fencing when she visited with a group from the local Veterans Affairs hospital in February of 2022. Something about it clicked immediately.
"I had no clue and they brought me here and I fell in love," she remembered.
She started training in August of that year, then competing.
Less than two years later, she got some astounding news: She would represent her country in Paris. USA Fencing publicly announced her qualification last week.
For Anderson, it was a sign that his gym was on its way to achieving his larger mission. For Taylor, it was confirmation that the home she found there was exactly where she belonged.
