I won a bronze medal at the 2016 Olympics. I had to fund my dream myself, and started a GoFundMe to pay my debt.

• Monica Aksamit is a 35-year-old Olympian who won bronze for fencing in 2016.
• Her mom, her coaches, and her prize funded her passion at the start.
• When she made the USA Olympic team in 2016, she was paid $300 a month and fell into credit card debt.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Monica Aksamit. It has been edited for length and clarity.

When I ask people how much they thought I earned as a US Olympian, they always guess an amount far above what I actually got paid.

During the years I was part of the US fencing team from 2016 to 2021, I made $300 a month. This was the pinnacle of my fencing career, and yet I wasn't making enough to cover my living expenses.

But this had always been my dream, and I had to pursue it at all costs.

I started fencing as a child

I'd been fencing since I was about 8. My mom, a Polish immigrant, had signed me up after a client of hers suggested she bring me along to a practice. He said there was a scholarship opportunity if I did well, and my mom was hooked.

Fencing was a great outlet for me during my parents' divorce. Most kids get yelled at for hitting other kids — I was being applauded for it.

My mom financially supported my fencing. She put herself into credit card debt to ensure we could pay for equipment, travel, practices, and tournaments.

I remember her once telling one of my coaches that she couldn't afford to bring me to practices anymore. The coach told her to just pay what she could. He wanted me to chase this dream and saw potential. My road to the Olympics wouldn't have been possible without him.

I wanted to compete in the Olympics

As I got a bit older, I started winning competitions, and with that came prize money. My mom's sacrifice, the coach's generosity, and the prize money kept me pushing forward.

After watching the 2004 Olympics in Greece, I became fixated on the idea of one day competing on the US Olympic fencing team. It was the first Olympic Games that my event, the women's saber, was added. Nowadays, they're a lot more lenient with adding events — but it wasn't like that then — it was a big deal.

That year, I sat on my grandparents' couch in Poland and watched, telling them one day, I'd become an Olympian. It was a crazy dream, and that time, my mom didn't necessarily think I'd achieve it, but she kept paving the way for me to get there.

I had to fund my Olympic dream myself

When I graduated from college in 2012, my main goal was to get to the Olympics. But now, I was an adult and had to fund it myself.

I alone had to pay for a big portion of the competitions, travel, and all of my own living expenses. I stayed at home because there was no way I could afford to pursue my dream while paying rent.

I worked endlessly as a fencing coach and a referee at tournaments. I handed out flyers for companies and took low-end modelling gigs.

My fencing club and those who contributed to my GoFundMe continued to financially support me along the way, helping fund my dream.

In 2016, I qualified for the US Olympic team. Team USA started covering all of my tournaments, training camps, and travel. But I was only given a monthly salary of $300.

There wasn't any way I could take on another job because what employer was going to let me take several weeks off throughout the year to train and compete?

I took on credit card debt

My only option was to take out credit cards to fund what I needed to achieve my dream — car insurance, train travel into the city to train, food, bills, and any extras I did. It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and I didn't want money to be the reason I couldn't achieve what I had worked so long for.

People are shocked when I tell them how much I made each month as an Olympian and how I went into debt to represent the US on an international stage.

It did eventually pay off. I took home a bronze medal at Rio in 2016, but I'm still paying off my credit cards from those years of training and competing with Team USA.

After Rio, I put on a fundraiser to cover the costs of getting to Tokyo 2020, and people generously donated enough to go over my goal — it was the only way to fund my Olympic dreams as someone who didn't come from money.