GREAT NECK, N.Y. – Eli Dershwitz '19 – Harvard fencing assistant coach, former two-time national champion, and 2019 Harvard graduate, who captured the gold medal in men's sabre at the 2023 Fencing World Championships in Italy – will be the men's recipient of the Jewish Sports Heritage Association 2023 Dolph Schayes Outstanding Achievement by a Jewish Athlete Award.
 
Winning this fencing award, Dershwitz became Team USA's first senior world champion in an event that has been a part of the Senior Worlds since 1922.
 
"We are very pleased to be honoring Eli with the Dolph Schayes Award," said Jewish Sports Heritage Association Director Alan Freedman. "Eli was the recipient of the 2019 Jay Fiedler Outstanding Jewish College Athlete of the Year Award, and we are so happy to see how he has continued to do so well as a fencer."
 
This is Dershwitz's second medal at the Senior World Championships. He won silver in 2018 in China. He also won three individual medals at Junior Worlds. Dershwitz joins Miles Chamley-Watson, who won the men's foil world championships in 2013, as the only U.S. men with Senior World titles in the history of fencing.
 
Princeton graduate basketball player Abby Meyers received the female award earlier this year.
 
Jewish Sports Heritage Association is a not-for-profit education organization whose mission is to educate the public about the role Jewish men and women have played, and continue to play, in the world of sports, an area of Jewish accomplishment often overlooked. The Dolph Schayes Award is given in memory of basketball great Dolph Schayes, a basketball hall of famer and voted one of the top 75 greatest players in the 75th anniversary of the NBA.