Donning a black suit with a silver medal hanging around his neck, Tim Morehouse '00 admitted he threw off many Brandesians last Friday in his first visit to his alma mater since winning a silver medal as a member of the U.S. Fencing Team at the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing."All day, I've been walking around campus, and so many people have congratulated me on my Halloween costume," he joked at the start of his speech. "Maybe it wasn't the best day to walk around with my Olympic medal."

The ensemble was merely Morehouse's choice of attire for his visit, which coincidentally occurred on Halloween. After mingling with students in the Usdan Student Center during lunch hours and taking pictures with University President Jehuda Reinhartz, Morehouse spoke about his childhood, Brandeis, pre-Olympic preparations and Olympic experiences to an audience of about 40 people in the Napoli Room of the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.

"This is like coming home," Morehouse said in an interview after the speech. "I have such fond memories of fencing here."

Morehouse was the first Brandeis alumnus to compete in the Olympics. He won his silver medal in the team saber competition, helping the U.S. defeat Hungary and Russia by one point each before falling to France in the gold medal match. He competed for the Judges from 1997 to 2000, making three NCAA Championship appearances and finishing fourth in the nation in the saber division in 2000.

Morehouse began his speech by talking about his childhood. When he was in ninth grade, he won a key New York City tournament, but coach Bill Shipman was the only coach that saw him that day.

"If I knew he was going to make the Olympic team, I would have come after him even harder," Shipman joked in a phone interview.

Morehouse then spoke of his Brandeis experience, which included finishing in the top 10 in the nation in saber three times and leading the Judges to the No. 1 ranking in Division III as a senior. After graduating, Morehouse decided he would aim to become an Olympic fencer, even though he said he was mostly anonymous on the national scene.

Morehouse eventually improved enough to qualify for the 2004 Olympics as an alternate, but he never got the chance to compete. After his progress stagnated soon after the Olympics, Morehouse said he decided to change his fencing style. Morehouse said he was known for his uncommon defensive moves, such as rising on one leg to lunge for a touch and flicking his blade while leaning backward to touch attacking opponents on their wrists. Instead of working to become more conventional, Morehouse decided to stick with his style.

"I had this battle between myself," he said in the speech. "This weird stuff was working, and the way I should be fencing, . I was losing doing that. I just decided that, 'you know what, I'm just going to be myself.'"

After showing video clips of his moves, Morehouse spoke about his 2008 Olympic experience. Morehouse showed a video clip of him fainting and falling on the floor for five seconds after the squad's victory over Russia and talked about Team U.S.A.'s strategy to finish points at the edges of the strip, where it is easier for the referee to see the action.

He then discussed the importance of setting goals before finishing the speech by playing a slideshow of pictures from Beijing.

"It's scary to say you want to do things that are so far away from you. It's even scary [for me] to say [to myself] that I want to win a gold medal, because who am I to set that goal [for myself]?" he said in the speech. "But if you don't set those kinds of goals, they just aren't going to happen."

Many members of the current fencing teams were at the speech, and Morehouse later practiced with some of them.

"A lot of fencers who get to his level have been [fencing] since they were 10 years old and are constantly in the circuit . but for him to go from college fencing to that level, even on an international level, is very, very unusual," foil Alexandra Dalrymple '11 said.

"I really want to go to the Olympics [after hearing Morehouse's speech]," foil JD Carroll '09 said. "Why wouldn't you? It would be really amazing.