Our Coaches
In Pursuit of Great Fencing
Bay Area Fencing Club would have not be the same without our team of passionate, professional and dedicated teachers. We’re extremely proud to share some of their stories with you, and if you have any questions or remarks - get in touch.
LISA POSTHUMUS
Executive Coach / Club Manager
Coach Lisa is in her 23rd season as Stanford Varsity head coach of the men’s and women’s fencing teams. She has led Stanford to 21 Western Conference titles, 17 top-10 NCAA finishes, and seven NCAA individual championships.
Among those coached by Coach Lisa was Vivian Kong, the 2014 NCAA champion in women's epee, who 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 is a 2016, 2020 Olympian for Hong Kong.
Felicia Zimmermann, another NCAA champion coached by Lisa, was inducted into the Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame. Felicia and her sister Iris were women's foil Olympians representing the USA in 1996.
Coach Lisa 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.
Coach Lisa also demands academic excellence. With a 100% graduation rate overall, her men's foil captain Lucas Orts, received the Elite 90 award as the NCAA competitor with the highest GPA.
Coach Lisa 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, Lisa was the head coach at UC San Diego for three seasons. A 1993 graduate of Penn State, Lisa captained the Nittany Lions and led them to the NCAA championship in 1990, finishing third in foil, at the same time her mother, 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.
SERGEI TIKHONOV
Founding Coach
Coach Sergei is a decorated athlete of world-class caliber, and a highly accomplished and internationally acclaimed fencing coach.
As an athlete, Sergei has won consecutive gold medals at the Russian Federation Senior Championships and the World Cup in Seoul, South Korea. Coach Sergei placed in the top three multiple times at both the European Senior Championships and the World Championships.
After his athlete career, Coach Sergei was the Olympic Trainer and Assistant Senior Coach for the prestigious Russian National Fencing Team where he trained elite Russian fencers who won many medals at major international competitions including the coveted Olympic gold. He also served as the Head Coach for the Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait national teams where he helped to elevate those countries fencing teams to top regional and international levels, before joining the Bay Area Fencing Club.
DAN MILGRAM
Saber/Foil Coach
Coach Dan has been fencing since his freshman year in high school. He is a former USA Junior World Team member as well as a gold-medalist at the fifteenth Maccabiah Games in Israel.
Coach Dan has been active in California fencing for the past 35 years and, in addition to starting programs at local grade and middle schools, has been an assistant coach at UCSD and is currently a volunteer assistant coach at Stanford University.
As the President of the Western Fencing Coalition, Coach Dan is working to build and fund new collegiate fencing programs in the NCAA Western Region.
NATHAN MILGRAM
Youth Program Coach
Nathan Milgram is a native of the Bay Area and has been a competitive fencer since the age of ten. Initially, he trained at The Cardinal Fencing Club under Olympic Coach George Pogosov, Sasha Lepeshinski, and Grigory Kirienko. Milgram won gold and silver medals as an athlete at both the European Maccabiah Games in Berlin and the Maccabiah Games in Tel Aviv, Israel.
During his four years at Drew University, he earned four varsity letters and served as team captain for three of those years.
He began his coaching career at Stanford's elite international training camp, where he coached Asia-Top Pacific's athletes. In addition, he has coached novice fencers for the past seven years.
In addition, as the grandson of the legendary American fencer Sherry Posthumus, he takes great pride in carrying on her legacy by introducing fencing to a new generation of American athletes.