Julia Jones-Pugliese

She was born Julia Jones, in New York, New York, and was Jewish.[4][1] She graduated New York University with a BS in Education in 1930.[5]

Jones married Anthony Pugliese, a sculptor and painter who designed the NIWFA competition medal awards (depicting a silhouette of her lunging), which are presented in her name and which serve as the NIWFA logo, and who also designed the logo for Brooklyn College; he died in 1953.[1][3][6] After her marriage, she moved to Alabama during World War II, returning to New York in 1945.[7] She had a daughter, Penelope Shaw, an instructor in modern dance and yoga at Hunter College; and two sons, Patri, who taught physics at Harvard University, and Paul, a cartographer for Time magazine.[3]

Jones started fencing in 1927 as a New York University student, after deciding that she was too short to play basketball.[3]

In 1928 in foil she won the first women's US National Intercollegiate championship, the IWFA Individual Championship, and was a member of the first IWFA Team Championship with the NYU fencing team.[8][1] In 1931, Jones was the US national junior women's foil champion.[7]

She qualified for and was a member of the US Olympic Women's Foil Fencing Team for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, but did not compete.[5][9] Jones was deemed ineligible to compete in the Olympics because she had accepted an offer to be a fencing coach at NYU, and therefore was considered a professional athlete for being paid to teach others about fencing.[10]

In 1990 at the age of 82 Jones-Pugliese won a silver medal for finishing second in the round-robin tournament of senior women ages 40 or older competing in senior épée in the United States Fencing Association national championship.[10] She was still competing in 1992 at age 84.[11]

In 1928 Jones co-founded, with Dorothy Hafner and Elizabeth Ross, the (United States) Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association—later known as the National Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association (the IWFA, and later, NIWFA).[12][8][13] The association, whose membership grew from 4 to 79 colleges, conducts America’s oldest continuous intercollegiate championship competition for women in any sport.[1][3][6] The annual NIWFA Foil Champion is awarded the Julia Jones Trophy, and the finalists in each weapon are awarded Julia Jones Medals.[14]

Jones-Pugliese had a 60-year career as a fencing coach.

From 1932-38 she was coach of the NYU women's fencing team—the first woman to coach a collegiate fencing team. [1][3] The team won IWFA national championships in 1932, 1933, and 1938.[8]

Jones-Pugliese retired for close to two decades to raise a family. [1] She returned to coaching in 1956. [1]

She was the fencing team's coach from 1956 until her death in 1993 at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York system.[1][10] Jones-Pugliese coached the Hunter team to a NIWFA national championship in 1970, and was named NIFWA Coach of the Year.[1] She was also an assistant professor in Hunter College's Department of Health and Physical Education.[7] In 1992, she was again awarded Coach of the Year honors.[1]

At the 1970 World University Games in Turin, Italy, Jones-Pugliese was the first woman appointed to coach an international US fencing team.[1] She also became the first woman coach of a US Olympic fencing team.[13] She was named assistant coach to both the men's and women's US fencing teams in 1977, and head coach in 1981.[10]

Jones-Pugliese was United States women’s and men’s fencing coach at the 1977 and 1981 Maccabiah Games.[1]

She died of a heart attack in Manhattan in 1993 at age 84.[15][3]

• 1976: NYU Athletics Hall of Fame[16][8]
• 1992: NIFWA Coach of the Year.
• 2002: International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame "Pillar of Achievement"[1]
• United States Fencing Association Hall of Honor[1]
• Helms Athletic Foundation Hall of Fame[1]
• New York Sports Hall of Fame[1]
• Hunter College Hall of Fame[1]
• The Team Medals and Individual Foil Champion trophy for the NIWFA are named after Julia Jones (under her maiden name), and fashioned in her likeness.

• Julia Jones -- NY Times Obit
• Pillar Achievement Bio
• NIWFA page on their founder, Julia Jones
• NYU Hall of Fame
• NIWFA Awards Page
• Julia Jones's page from the USFA Hall of Honor