Going into 2020-21, Lisa Posthumus is in her 23rd season as head coach of the men’s and women’s fencing teams, making her Stanford's third-longest head coach, behind only women's basketball's Tara VanDerveer (35th year) and women's water polo's John Tanner (24th).
Posthumus has led Stanford to 21 Western Conference titles, 17 top-10 NCAA finishes, and seven NCAA individual championships.
Among those coached by Posthumus was Alex Massialas, a two-time NCAA champion in men's foil. Massialas went on to earn a silver medal in foil at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro and collected a bronze in team foil. He also has qualified for the Tokyo Olympics.
Vivian Kong, the 2014 NCAA champion in women's epee, was No. 1 in the world in her weapon in 2019, winning two World Cup events and winning seven medals altogether in the season. Kong, a 2016 Olympian for Hong Kong, won bronze at the 2018 World Championships.
And in 2018, Felicia Zimmermann, another NCAA champion coached by Posthumus, was inducted into the Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame.
Posthumus coached Felix Reichling to back-to-back NCAA men's foil titles in 1999 and 2000. Her 1999 team, which featured NCAA champions Monique DeBruin (women's foil) and Felicia Zimmermann (women's epee), finished third at the NCAA Championships.
The 2020 season was halted before the NCAA Championships, but five Cardinal fencers had advanced to Detroit, with Robin Cheong (men's epee, Lucas Orts (men's foil), Hanna Lee (women's epee), and Madeleine Liao (women's foil) winning NCAA West Regional titles. In addition to earning All-America honors, Orts was named as an Academic All-American.
In 2019, two Stanford fencers -- Sean Strong (6th, men's epee) and Orts (10th, men's foil) -- earned All-America honors, with Orts also receiving the Elite 90 award as the NCAA competitor with the highest GPA.
Posthumus was a Stanford assistant coach from 1996-98, a stretch in which Stanford finished among the top seven at the NCAA Championships each year, including third-places in 1997 and 1998.
Prior to joining the Cardinal coaching staff, Posthumus was head coach at UC San Diego for three seasons.
A 1993 graduate of Penn State, Posthumus led the Nittany Lions to the NCAA championship in 1990, finishing third in foil, at the same time her sister Sherry Posthumus was the Stanford women's head coach.
Lisa was a three-time letterwinner at Penn State and earned a degree in exercise sport science.
