By Stephen Caruso

The moment didn’t quite go as planned for Tim Morehouse.

The 29-year-old saber fencer was in bed recovering from a recent appendectomy when he first received the news of a lifetime: he would be heading back to the Olympics.

“I never quite expected to have that moment where I knew I was qualified, to occur in bed, feeling miserable,” Morehouse said shortly after practice last week at the Manhattan Fencing Club in midtown. “So it was a little anti-climactic at that point, but I’m really excited.”

It was March and the former Riverdale resident and Riverdale Country School alum was forced to check competition results on the Web to discover that he had officially qualified to compete for the U.S. in the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing.

Morehouse, who went to the 2004 Olympics in Athens as an alternate, is now the No. 2 ranked men’s saber fencer in the country and No. 17 in the world. And while he never got to pick up a sword to compete in Athens, Morehouse’s impressive rankings guarantee him the opportunity to do so in both the individual and team competitions in Beijing.

It’s been a 15-plus-year journey for Morehouse, who began fencing as a seventh-grader at Riverdale Country under the tutelage of 52-year head coach Martin Schneider.

At the local school, Morehouse transformed from an unruly kid who was one more missed practice away from being kicked off the team, to a dedicated leader who captained his high school team.

“Coach Schneider really taught me my love for the sport,” Morehouse recalled. “I actually didn’t know what fencing was when I first went to practice. He loves what he does, and if there’s anything he taught me, it’s that if you love what you do, you can do really great things with it.”

Morehouse used his love of fencing to motivate him to elite status during his college years and beyond.