‘You’ll never guess what I did today’

The mother of Grace Lukens ’26 can summarize her daughter’s first-year experience at Denison in seven words:

You’ll never guess what I did today.

Kimberly Lukens lost track of how many times the English literature and dance major uttered those words during calls home. One week, she was writing articles for the Denisonian student newspaper. The next week, she was auditioning for a theater production.

Lukens joined a modern dance club. Attended meetings of a literary club. Took a job repairing and maintaining costumes at the Michael D. Eisner Performing Arts Center.

Lukens was all over The Hill sampling what the liberal arts college had to offer.

“I came to Denison with an ‘I’m gonna try everything’ mentality,” Lukens recalls. “I definitely think that Denison has taught me that I’m able to find multiple avenues of passion and success simultaneously.”

That mindset led her to join the university’s club fencing team in the fall of 2022, despite her lack of experience in the niche sport.

“Grace has never been afraid to try new things,” Kimberly Lukens says. “If she likes something, she will stick with it. Now, she’s fencing against competitors with national and international experience.”

Denison encourages students to explore their interests and discover new ones. It’s an ideal environment for a student like Lukens, who can read about swashbuckling musketeers in English class by day and wield epees in spirited athletic combat at night.

En garde!

In hindsight, Lukens was fortunate not to land a role in the campus production of You on the Moors Now.

It freed up her schedule to learn about fencing.

The club team, where Lukens started, is open to all students, while the varsity team is for women.

“My best friend suggested we try it,” Lukens says. “I’d seen it in the Olympics, but that was about it.”

Lukens has been involved in dance from an early age. While tap is her favorite — she still wears a pair of silver tap shoes she received for her 16th birthday — she participates in many forms of dance at Denison.

It became apparent from almost the moment she picked up an epee that all those years of dancing had given her rhythm and footwork skills that crossed over to fencing.

“Grace had such good form that I assumed she had some previous training,” says Leif Gajkowski ’26, a club team member. “In fencing, you have to move and control your body in a precise way, and she can do that.”

Fencing became a varsity sport at Denison in 2019. In the early years, coach Peter Grandbois often worked with athletes who had no prior experience.

That’s changed as the program has blossomed.

Nowadays, it’s rare for Big Red coaches to promote a fencer from the club team — but they appreciated Lukens’ work ethic and attitude and recognized her potential. In January 2023, she was invited to join the varsity team.

“Fencing is like a dance — it’s all rhythm and tempo,” says Grandbois, who’s also an English professor. “The whole goal of fencing is to use your footwork to match the tempo of the other person and then disturb it. It’s like making a song together, and then you break it and change the tempo once the distance between is right.”

Lukens has suffered defeats against seasoned opponents, but she’s also qualified for the NCAA regional tournament in each of her first two years. In doing so, she’s learned something about herself.

“I wasn’t someone who was ultra-competitive growing up; I wasn’t a sports person,” Lukens says. “I like working hard and showing my best self. So I surprised myself when I joined the fencing team. I went out there and really wanted to win.”

Awards and recognition

Anna Laura Xavier Batista ’26 can confirm her roommate sleeps. She also knows how her good friend fits so many activities into her waking hours.

“Grace is really good at scheduling,” Batista says. “She keeps everything in order. She can do a lot because she’s well-organized.”

Lukens, who was recognized for her academic achievements at the annual James T. Glerum Top-50 Scholar-Athletes Honors Celebration in spring 2024, aspires to become a college English professor who also teaches dance. She has twice taken advantage of the university’s award-winning Summer Scholars program, focusing her research on her love of English Literature.

As a sophomore, she was named a dance department fellow and earned praise from the faculty for her performance in the 2024 spring concert Crescendo.

“Grace Lukens is an outstanding emerging student artist in the dance department,” says Ojeya Cruz Banks, associate chair of dance. “I have always been impressed with her versatility as a dancer, performer, and student leader.”

Kimberly Lukens remembers how eager her daughter was to attend Denison and become part of a liberal arts culture that promotes self-discovery. Lukens has grown as a student and a dancer, but also in ways she could not have imagined.

“I’ve always had a sort of private sense of self-confidence in the way that I know my worth and talent isn’t defined by the opinions of others,” Lukens says. “However, I think dancing and fencing at Denison has taught me that there is a huge community of people who want to support each other’s passions, which has really helped me to take risks and given me that extra push to put myself out there.”