A former UMKC physical education assistant professor has been selected as the oldest volunteer at this year’s Paralympic Games in Paris. At nearly 94, she’s the oldest in the Games’ 64-year history.
Diane Stephenson (M.A. ’67) will work alongside one of her former students, UMKC medical graduate, Sandra Katz (M.D. ’77) throughout the Games.
Stephenson, great grandmother to 10 children, will be 94 in October. She coached fencing at UMKC for 14 years and was chosen among thousands of applicants from many different countries for the prestigious Games.
“I feel honored, and immensely excited,” said Stephenson, who will perform a number of functions at the international fencing arena to help the competitions run smoothly. “To be a uniformed volunteer is a high point in my life, not just in my fencing career, but all the years I’ve spent in sports.”
Stephenson was a tenured assistant professor in sports medicine and physiology of exercise and taught fencing beginning in 1966. She trained champion fencers and competed in tournaments in Chicago, New Orleans and Boulder, eventually earning 40 individual and team member trophies and medals. Among her students was Katz, a medical graduate of UMKC in ophthalmology.
“I trained the champion of the Midwest back then and another one of my students was the first to become number one in two weapons, foil and épée, in the U.S. under-19 tournament, thus qualifying for the under-20 World Championship in Madrid,” Stephenson said. “My fencers became so renowned that when the Air Force Academy épée team was preparing for the Pan American Games, they came to Kansas City to train with my fencers and ended up winning first place after training with my team. Some members of my UMKC team are still fencing competitively all these years later.”
“Diane fully deserves her selection, and we are proud to have her with us in Paris,” said a spokesperson for the Paralympics. “She has worked very hard in her life to help so many people develop a love of sports, particularly fencing, and we are sure such passion will be obvious during the Games.”
“Rarely does a sport create such an inseparable bond for more than 50 years yet amazingly, even though at sword's point to each other, my group of fencers became the closest of friends, like family,” Stephenson said. “There were even several marriages among them.”
To help make her training even more effective in Kansas City, Stephenson attended the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City to film specific fencing techniques to share with her students.
“You can imagine how excited I am now about Paris and seeing the highest levels of the sport being played there,” she said.
Stephenson, who also coached fencing at the University of Maine. She now lives in Tucson, but visits Kansas City regularly, joining her university fencing team for breakfasts.
“Forty-two years ago, nine fencers had a photo taken at a team member's wedding,” she said. “Then 42 years later, at one of our reunions, we had a photo taken. The same nine fencers were there standing in the exact same positions.”