Crimson Fencers Squeeze past SMU

Harvard's fencing team, overconfident after two years of success over Southeastern Massachusetts University (SMU), received an unexpectedly strong challenge from the corsairs Saturday at the IAB before squeezing by with a 17.10 win.

Despite the Crimson's 7-2 advantage in the first round it took a five-out-of six performance by the foil and epee teams in the third round to pull out the match.

The Corsairs, taking advantage of Crimson coach Edo Marion's strategy of playing his less experienced fencers after the first round, closed the gap to within three points, 12-9, a third of the way through the final round.

Marion kept his first-line epee men around to reassure those who believed that SMU might indeed pull an upset. But the strong last round performance of the point teams meant that Marion didn't need to bring his first-line performers back.

The win, compared with last year's overwhelming 25-2 triumph, was a disappointment. Harvard fencers looked lackluster and sloppy, and seemed to believe far too much the pre-match buildup of their invincibility. The SMU squad, with nothing to lose and everything to gain, was not overawed by the Crimson press clippings, and put up a surprisingly good fight for three-fourths of the match.

This just proves that our practices and attitude are not what they should be," Marion said after the win. "But it is good that this happened early in the season because it will show out fencers that they are not invincible."

The match had started auspiciously enough. Both sabre and epee teams swept all three of their bouts, though the foil squad was disappointing, dropping two out of three matches. In foil, highly regarded freshman Phillipe Bennett made a dubious collegiate debut by dropping his first bout 5-1, and Dave Fichter followed suit, losing a 5-3 decision.

When Marion took his first string out for the second round, Harvard fell apart. The Crimson lost two out of three in both sabre and epee and went on to lose the round, 5-4. The sole bright spot for the Crimson was freshman Chris Jenning's debut. Jennings proved that he is as good as advertised, toying with his Corsair opponent and winning, 5-2.

But for all of Harvard's ineptness, SMU simply wasn't as bad as everyone had predicted. The Corsair foil team was agressive and, according so Marion, "stylistically sound."

They weren't bad." Marion said afterwards, " but there is no way our second team should have lost to them the way it did."

The scoring breakdown, by weapon, went like this. Harvard foil and epee teams took six out of nine bouts each. The sabre squad was 5-4, although the first team was 3-0 before leaving.

Individually freshman foil man John Walinski, Ellis (also in foil), and senior sabre man Walt Morris each won two bouts without a loss.

Marion plans a few changes in approach this week as he seeks to push the squad into serious training. Starting Monday there will be four mandatory practices a week rather than the come-when-you-feel-like-it policy that has prevailed up to this point. Also, Marion plans to eliminate individual lessons, and to drill squad as a whole to eliminate the inactivity that occurs when individuals go one-on-one with the coach.