Fencing has a long and fascinating history — and Alyssa Hirsch is helping uncover it. A Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and former Wayne State varsity fencer, Alyssa studies 20th-century U.S. fencing and its intersections with immigration, identity, and the Soviet Union. She joins First to 15 to share how she became a fencing historian, the stories she’s discovering — from post-Soviet coaches to Cold War camaraderie — and how every club can help preserve its own history.