Marion Says Training Program Should Improve Fencing Squad

In spite of a dangerous scarcity of epee men, the fencing team should do very well in Ivy League competition this year, Coach Edo Marion said last night. Marion is currently using a new training method which he hopes will ease the excessive tension some swordsmen feel during a match, as will as teaching them the "right psychological moment" to strike.

His new program couples extensive live fencing with drills using "special exercises." With this training, he hopes to build fencers strong enough to overcome Princeton and Yale, who tied last year for the League fencing championship.

The team's most formidable opponent, however, will be non-League New York University, which boasts a list of nationally-known players, some of whom have fenced in the Olympics.

To meet these powers, Marion will use a team which is notably strong in the foil division, but undermanned in the epee class. His personnel problems have even forced him to switch Allan Gardner, basically a foil man, to epee competition in order to help the team's only regular epee combatant, Jim Roberts.

But the Crimson has three excellent foil men in Dave Johnson, the captain, Larry Johnson, and Phil Charat--men whom Marion judges more than competent to offset Gardner's absence.

Jon Piel and Lajos Heder are two of the teams' probable representatives in the sabre division.