Gladys Berardi is in her fifth season as an assistant coach with the Knights. Her duties include keeping team and indivicual statistics as well as travel arrangements. She also provides instruction for epee, sabre and foil.
Berardi served as the head coach at West Morris Central High School for seven years, instructing students from club through varsity levels. She coordinated the schedule for both practices and meets and developed the budget, established a fencing parents committee and organized fundraising activities.
Prior to that, Berardi served as head coach at Montclair State from 1982-1983 and from 1981-1982 she instructed Caldwell College as head coach. Her coaching experience started in 1980-1981 when she was the head coach of New Jersey City State University.
Accumulating her own accreditations as a fencer, Berardi fenced on the collegiate level at Montclair State from 1978-79, competing in the NIWFA's. She was the USFA New Jersey Dviision Women's Champion in epee in 1980 and foil in 1990. She earned the same distinction in sabre in 2002.
She is nationally ranked in all three weapons in the Veterans category and won a bronze medal in sabre in the 1998 Nike World Masters Games in Portland, OR. In 1996 she represented the United Sates in Germany as a member of the US Veterans team.
Berardi received her master's degree in environmental studies in 1981 after earning a bachelor's degree in parks and recreation management in 1979, earning both at Montclair State University. She currently instructs at the Morris Center YMCA as the Fencing Club Director and presently serves as the chairperson for USFA's New Jersey Division . Berardi, whose daughter Sabina Orsi fenced for Fairleigh Dickinson for four years, resides in Long Valley, NJ.
