PRELIMINARIES BEGIN IN FENCING TOURNEY TODAY

Preliminaries for the annual University fencing tournament will begin this afternoon at 3 o'clock in the Fencing Room of the New Indoor Athletic Building. The elimination will continue tomorrow at the same hour, and the finals of the tournament will be held on Friday afternoon.

Bouts will be held separately in foils, sabre, and epee to determine the University champion in each division. The four best swordsmen in foils and epee will be selected today, while the sabre competition will take place tomorrow. Then on Friday these four preliminary winners will fence in their classes to eliminate all but one in each group.

Rene Peroy, fencing coach, said yesterday that he expected a large number of graduate students to register for the tournament before the closing of the lists at 1 o'clock today. Thus far the large percentage of the entrants have been members of the University fencing team and the better swordsmen of the first-year team. The fencers from the graduate schools always prove to be the "dark horses" of the tournament and often topple the swordsmen of the University team.

Predictions as to the probable outcome of the tournament cannot be made because of the unknown strength of the fencers outside the College, who may have been stars on their college teams. However, in consideration of the strength shown by the University swordsmen in the northern division of the intercollegiates last Saturday, it seems likely that they will make a clean sweep of the championships.