Rutledge Edged Out of Sabre Finals

It was a weekend of disappointment for Harvard's fencing team. Co-champions in the Ivy League and Ivy weapon titlists in foil and epee, the Crimson straggled home a dismal seventh in the final standings of the IFA Eastern fencing championships Friday and Saturday at the IAB.

Friday, disappointment centered on Harvard's foil and epee teams, which punted away their chances to finish in the money. On Saturday, Harvard's frustration story belonged to Gordon Rutledge, the Crimson's lone legitimate contender in sabre competition.

In Contention

Rutledge, after dropping his first three bouts in the preliminaries, stormed back to sweep his last nine, to tie for second in the second pool of action and thrust himself into contention for the individual sabre title.

But Harvard's last hope to place a Crimson competitor in the finals was quickly squelched, as Rutledge went down to an agonizing 5-4 defeat in a fence-off with Cornell's Anastasios Sarikas. For a few brief moments Rutledge seemed destined to ride the momentum of his nine-bout win streak into the finals. He jumped out to a quick 4-2 lead over Sarikas, but the final touch Rutledge needed to advance failed to go his way and Sarikas rallied to eke out a 5-4 decision.

"I have no alibi for losing," Rutledge said afterwards, as he gloomily watched the sabre finals. "I beat the dude, but the directors saw it the other way. That's why I'm up here [in the stands] and Sarikas is down there."

Despite just missing out on the finals, Rutledge was far and away the only bright spot for Harvard in the last day of IFA competition. Throughout Saturday's matches Harvard's chronically weak sabre team fenced true to form, capturing only 13 wins in 36 bouts. Loren Joseph and Mike Szymonifka were able to win just four bouts between them in support of Rutledge, and Harvard finished ninth in the 13-team field.

Overall, powerhouse NYU dominated the IFAs once again, running up 79 total points to win its fifth IFA three-weapon title in the last seven years. The Violets finished with a four-point edge over runner-up Columbia, and a comfortable bulge over third-place Princeton's 61-point total. Harvard finished with 50 points.

In individual competition, MIT's Johan Ackerman followed up the Engineers' team foil title by winning the individual crown. Ackerman, a member of the Swedish Olympic team, was never in serious trouble in Saturday's finals. In epee, NYU's Albert Peters upset his more highly-touted teammates Risto Hurme and Hans Weiselgrin to win the individual title, and still another NYU teammate, Peter Westbrook, bested Columbia's Tom Losonczy in a fence-off for the sabre title.

In team-weapon competition Columbia edged NYU for the team sabre crown, NYU ran away with the epee title, and MIT captured the foil championship.