CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – After five highly successful seasons serving as an assistant coach for Harvard fencing, Matteo Zennaro will join Penn State as associate head coach of the Nittany Lions program.
 
Zennaro helped lead the Crimson to a series of historic accomplishments during his time in Cambridge. During that span, the Crimson tallied nearly 40 All-Americans between the men's and women's teams. Harvard posted more than 300 wins in dual event competition and notched three top-five finishes at the NCAA Championships. At the conclusion of his first season, the Crimson had their highest finish (fourth) in 13 years at the 2019 NCAA Fencing Championships, with Geoffrey Tourette earning bronze in the foil. One year later, the men's team won its first outright Ivy League championship since 2013, sweeping first team All-Ivy League honors in the foil.
 
In 2021-22, Zennaro played a key role in helping the Crimson thrive in its return to competition, as Harvard took second place at the NCAA Championships, with individual champions on both the men's and women's foil at the NCAA Northeast Regional (Lauren Scruggs, Kenji Bravo). This past year, under Zennaro's guidance, Scruggs was crowned an NCAA champion in women's foil, the seventh NCAA individual champion in school history.
 
Zennaro arrived at Harvard after serving as assistant coach for Ohio State since the beginning of the new year. Prior to his duration with the Buckeyes, Zennaro specialized in foil, coaching the Italian Junior National team from 2007 up until 2017.
 
Throughout his career as a foilest, he found success during the 1998 Italian Championships, picking up gold and a silver medal on the global scale during the 1999 Seoul World Championships. Five years later, Zennaro picked up his second gold medal in 2004 at the Italian Championships before finishing second at the Mediterranean Games the following year.
 
In team competition, he brought his foil skills to the 2000 Sydney Olympics, earning a bronze medal with his fellow Italians, and captured gold at the 2002 European Championships in Moscow.