Harvard University

Cassandra Bates joined the Harvard fencing staff as a volunteer assistant coach in 2019. She has previously served as head coach for Boston University’s club team and assistant coach for Concord-Carlisle Regional High School in 2017-2018. 

Bates has been competing internationally for the United States since 2014. In 2016, Bates won bronze at the Division I National Championship and won silver in the Division IA National Championship. Bates was a training partner for USA Modern Pentathlon at the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs between 2013-2015. Throughout her career, she has made more than twenty national finals. Bates has been ranked in the top fifteen in the country in Senior Women’s Epee for the last six years. In 2014, Bates won the 2014 Pan American Sports Festival.  

A graduate of University of Massachusetts Boston with a bachelor’s degree in history, Bates was summa cum laude, first in her major, and received honors for her senior thesis. Bates furthered her education in 2019 where she received her master’s in Mind, Brain, and Education from Harvard's Graduate School of Education with a focus on the cognitive and emotional components of skill development and performance.