New Jersey’s most unlikely pair of Olympic dreams started a decade and a half ago with a far more modest goal: A single mom, looking for something -- anything -- as an extracurricular activity for her high school-bound daughter.

That was it. Avis Bishop-Thompson heard a strange clack-clack-clacking noise coming from the ESL center at Teaneck High during an open house for incoming freshmen. She peeked in, saw several young athletes demonstrating an unfamiliar sport, and struck up a conversation with the team's head coach.

Fencing, she was told, would be perfect for her daughter given her childhood training as a ballet dancer. But what about her younger son? Well, he always did complain that she wouldn't let him play with toy swords.

She would give him a choice: Take up fencing with your sister on the weekends, or sit in the stands with her and watch. That was an easy sell.

And so it began. Kamali and Khalil Thompson, two kids from Teaneck, were fencers. People around town would look at them -- and, their mother knew, at their skin color -- before asking a predictable question. “Really? How’d they get into that?”

Bishop-Thompson loved the strange looks. She had accomplished her goal and found something to keep her kids active. How could she possibly know what would come next?

That her daughter and son would embrace the sport in a way that no one -- including the two of them -- would expect?

That Kamali would continue to pursue her dream of reaching the Olympics even as she enrolled in med school at Rutgers, putting down her stethoscope in the afternoon and picking up a saber every night?

That Khalil would consider giving up fencing entirely during a crippling battle with depression and anxiety, only to discover that the sport became the perfect outlet to help his recovery?

That the Thompson siblings, based on the points standings that determine the U.S. fencing team, would be in prime position to qualify for the Tokyo Games this summer and bring their unlikely family story to the international stage?

"My heart overflows as I watch them or listen to the livestream and I can hear one cheering for the other," Bishop-Thompson said. "Once they said they wanted to do this, I knew no matter what the outcome was, they would give it their all.

"And here they are."

The ‘doctor’ is in

Here, in the case of Kamali Thompson, is a moving target.

Her schedule over much of the past few years has felt like a different Olympic event -- the marathon -- every single day. During her first two years of med school, the Temple grad had 18-hour days shuttling between classes at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and training at the Peter Westbrook Foundation in Manhattan.

And in the third year? That's where things got really interesting. This was the average day for Thompson in 2017 -- although, to be clear, the word "average" certainly is not appropriate in any way:

5 a.m. -- Alarm.

6-7 a.m. -- Receive updates on patients.

7-10 a.m. -- See patients and update the residents.

10 a.m.-12 p.m. -- Lecture.

12-1 p.m. -- Lunch.

1-4 p.m. -- Time in the operating room with doctors.

5 p.m. -- Board NJ Transit to the Peter Westbrook Foundation.

6-9 p.m. -- Fencing practice.

9 p.m. -- Take the train home (with store-bought dinner on the trip).

10 p.m. -- Arrive home. Study. Sleep. And repeat.

The grueling days and nights, of course, beg the question: Why not put off med school until her fencing career was over? She didn't underestimate the challenge. The 27-year-old was just a late bloomer in her sport.

Kamali Thompson juggled a full course load at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School while training to competing in the Olympics.

"I've wanted to be a doctor since I was 3 or 4 years old, but I wanted to see what else I could do in fencing," she said. "But because I didn't have that much experience, I didn't feel like it made sense not to go to med school. I thought, 'If it works out, that's great. If it doesn't, then I tried and I didn't put my life on hold.'"

Her fencing performances got stronger and stronger -- so strong, in fact, that she narrowly missed making the U.S. team for the Rio Games in 2016. She took some time off to train during that Olympic cycle, but used most of her free time to get an MBA at Rutgers Business School.

That’s right. Business school. If they handed out gold medals for having a Type-A personality, she’d have a sock-drawer filled with them.

"I've never seen somebody who could come four days a week to train and still handle an academic workload like that," said Westbrook, the five-time Olympian whose foundation has become the nation's most prominent fencing academy. "I don't know how she did it."

She took more time off from med school this year to -- finally -- dedicate herself full time to training and competing. Gone are the days of running out of the hospital, in her scrubs, to race to a flight for an international competition in Poland. But the greeting when she arrives has not changed.

“Through social media and word of mouth, all the (athletes from) other countries found out what I was doing,” she said. “So a lot of them call me ‘the doctor’ now -- and in whatever language they speak. Sometimes, we’ll be fencing and somebody will get hurt, and they’ll joke, ‘Hey. Get out there. Go fix them.’ It’s kind of cool.”

She plans to go back to med school in August, just weeks after the Tokyo Games close, and finish in February. No matter what happens in her fencing career, she expects to apply for an orthopedic residency and graduate in 2021.

Her dream scenario? Walk off the Olympic stage in mid-August after competing at the highest level of her sport, then walk back into that hospital in Central Jersey a few weeks later with a story to tell for the rest of her life.

Only one thing could make that better: Having her brother at her side in Tokyo. Especially given his difficult journey this far.

Fencing as therapy

Westbrook has a tradition of asking the experienced fencers in his Manhattan training center to talk to newcomers. But he wants them to focus on more than the sport. To talk about life.

To get personal.

So one day in 2017, with the eyes of 200 people on him, Khalil Thompson stood in front of an audience expecting to hear about his promising athletic career and said this: "I was diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety."

Westbrook listened with a combination of pride and wonder. He knew the story already. He had seen the young fencer during his darkest days when the idea of leaving his house, much less coming into Manhattan to fence, was too overwhelming to consider.

The fencing pioneer made his student a promise: He wasn’t alone. Come be around people who loved him, Westbrook said, and hear their stories of overcoming similar challenges. Khalil listened, and soon, he was on the road to recovery.

But to open up like that? In front of strangers?

“It was amazing. Not everyone is willing to share that level of pain in front of people,” Westbrook said. “If I see him make the Olympic team -- and I think I will -- that will be one of the most incredible stories I’ve seen in fencing.”

Sharing his story with others, it turns out, came easy for Khalil Thompson. Reaching his life-changing diagnosis did not.

Thompson had followed his sister into the sport when he was 9 years old, a Star Wars fan whose mother wouldn’t buy him a toy lightsaber who was giddy at the opportunity to opportunity bang on other kids with a real sword.

"I realized, 'Oh. I don't get in trouble for hitting somebody. I can do that,'" Khalil, now 22, said.

He was a quick learner. He went from Teaneck High to Penn State, a dominant program with 12 NCAA team championships since 1990. But something didn't feel right.

When he described how he was feeling to his sister during phone calls from State College -- always tired, always sleeping in, always sad -- Kamali Thompson made the connection with what she was learning in med school. Her brother was suffering from depression and anxiety. He needed help.

He left Penn State, moved back home and sought professional help. "I didn't leave the house for a month," he said, and he soon faced a decision about his sport. He could walk away from fencing, but the sport was more important to him than winning medals. If he gave it up, what would spur him to get out of bed in the morning?

His mother laid it out for him: "If that's your decision," she said, "you need to walk away with no regrets, with a clear head and a clear heart."

He stuck with it, and with a renewed focus, rattled off a string of victories. When won the Junior Olympics in 2017 in Riverside, Calif., with a dramatic victory over fellow American Andrew Sun, he flipped off his helmet and let loose with three loud primal screams to fill the arena.

"I found my love for the sport again," he said.

Khalil Thompson battled through severe anxiety and depression to become one of America's top saber fencers.

He enrolled in NJIT, where he is studying communications while training and competing. The commute to the city is a challenge -- "NJ Transit and I, we have a love-hate relationship," he said with a laugh -- but he manages.

That’s how he approaches depression, too. “I manage,” he said, and part of that is taking an open approach with it. When he was done talking about his struggles in that speech to the 200 newcomers at Westbrook’s school, several people in the audience sought him ought to offer encouragement.

Many delivered this message: I went through the same thing.

"I am so proud of him on many levels," his mother said. "Most black men don't talk about (depression). He came out with it, he talked about it, he made the decision that he needed to stay home and get healthy."

Being home also had another benefit. He was closer to his sounding board, occasional trainer partner and inspiration. His sister.

"I'm willing to put so much energy into fencing because it means the world to me, and I'm glad I can share that with (my sister)," he said. "It really brought us together. I'm thankful for that."

Two for Tokyo?

The road to the Olympics is a meandering one for fencers. Unlike high-profile sports such as swimming and track, there is no qualifying tournament to determine which athletes will represent Team USA.

Instead, the brother and sister will crisscross the globe over the next three months, accumulating points based on their performances. Both are currently third in the standings, respectively, for men’s and women’s saber. That means, if the four-athlete teams were selected tomorrow, they’d be Tokyo bound.

It would not be unprecedented in U.S. fencing history. In 2008, another brother-sister tandem from Westbrook's club, Keeth and Erinn Smart, won silver medals in Beijing. But that doesn't make it any less unusual.

“It’s difficult for one (fencer) to reach the Olympics,” Westbrook said. “To have two from the same family? That’s amazing.”

They’ll have to keep fencing at a high level to guarantee that trip this summer. No matter where they are and no matter what time they are competing, their mother will find the live feed on her iPad and watch from her home in Teaneck.

"No matter the outcome, I couldn't be happier," Bishop-Thompson said. "Watching this whole thing has been priceless."

A journey that started as something to kill time after school in Teaneck might end half a world away on the biggest stage in sports. Even the proud mother has a hard time believing it's true.

This is the first installment in an occasional series profiling New Jersey’s Olympic hopefuls for the 2020 Tokyo Games. Click here for a full roster of potential Olympians with ties to the state.

To help support Kamali Thompson’s Olympic quest, visit her website for more information.

Steve Politi may be reached at spoliti@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @StevePoliti. Find NJ.com on Facebook.