VETERANS WEEK: Josh Runyan Still Flying High with Triton Fencing

A veteran of the U.S. Marines and U.S. Navy, the world champion fencer has been a coach at UC San Diego for nearly two decades

11/3/2020 9:00:00 AM

Throughout the week of Nov. 2-6, UC San Diego Athletics will be honoring UC San Diego Veterans Week by sharing the stories of Triton scholar-athlete alumni and coaches who have served in the military. For more information on UC San Diego Veterans Week, click here.

UC San Diego's Josh Runyan has spent a good portion of his life on strips.

For the past 18 years, Runyan has been tutoring Triton scholar-athletes on the fencing strips as an assistant coach and associate head coach of the UC San Diego fencing team. As a fencer himself, he won a gold medal at the 2019 World Veterans Championship, adding hardware to a collection that already included a silver medal from 2011 and a bronze medal from 2018.

Runyan is also no stranger to airstrips. He spent four years active duty in the U.S. Marine Corps prior to flying F-14 Tomcats for the U.S. Navy for nine years. Recently, he retired as a Boeing 767 captain for a major airline.

During UC San Diego Veterans Week, we salute and thank Josh for his service on and off the strips.

The video feature below was was done in late 2019 by Fox Sports San Diego.

I wrote a thesis paper on the connection between military aviation and fencing. There's a lot of crossover. It's very much like a chess match. You try to figure out what their first offensive move is and you try to look for a move to counter it.

About UC San Diego Athletics
After two decades as one of the most successful programs in NCAA Division II, the UC San Diego intercollegiate athletics program begins a new era in 2020 as a member of the Big West Conference in NCAA Division I. The 23-sport Tritons earned 30 team and nearly 150 individual national championships during its time in Divisions II and III and helped guide more than 1,400 scholar-athletes to All-America honors. In addition, 83 Tritons have been named Academic All-Americans, while 37 have earned prestigious NCAA Post Graduate Scholarships. UC San Diego scholar-athletes exemplify the academic ideals of one of the world's preeminent institutions, graduating at an average rate of 91 percent, one of the highest rates among institutions at all divisions. For more information on the Tritons, visit UCSDtritons.com or follow UC San Diego Athletics on social media @UCSDtritons.

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