Fencers Foiled; Gattnar Earns All-American

It was a tale of two seasons for the Harvard fencing program.

It was the best of times in the first half of the year, when both Harvard squads consistently beat weaker opponents at home; the wins were few and far between in the second half of the team season, however, as the men (6-6) lost their five meets and the women (8-6) lost five of their last six.

The season was capped by a pair of middle-of-the-pack finishes at the Intercollegiate Fencing Association (IFA) Tournament, where the men took ninth of 12 teams and the women seventh out of 16.

Although neither team distinguished itself as part of the nation's upper echelon, several impressive individual performances were turned in on both sides of the gender line.

Record: 6-6 (men), 8-6 (women)

Coach: Branimir Zivkovic

Highlights: Gattnar wins IFA title, finishes fifth at NCAAs

Seniors: Michael Gattnar, Jill Katz, Alana McMahon, Andrew Prihodko, Lee Scheffler, Erica Silverstein, Meredith Trauner

Harvard fencing can boast of a couple of All-Americans in women's captain Jill Katz--a Second Teamer--and men's captain Michael Gattnar, who earned First-Team honors after winning the IFA championship in epee, his weapon of choice.

"I was happy to win that," Gattnar said. "All the top people were there and our coach thinks really highly of the IFA championship."

Gattnar, who transferred from Lawrence College for his junior campaign, won further distinction at the NCAA Fencing Championship, where he defeated eventual national champion George Hentea of St. John's en route to a fifth-place finish in epee.

"I felt pretty good going in, [but] I was disappointed that I didn't win," Gattnar said of his NCAA performance.

He finished tops among the 20 non-qualifiers in the field and narrowly missed a spot in the four-man championship. He finished the season with a remarkable 27-3 record.

Gattnar, Harvard's first male IFA champion in a decade, graduates today, and is eying a spot on the Olympic team of his native Slovakia.

Although the men's team will lose strong fencers in Gattnar and senior epee Andrew Prihodko, it can look to its close late-season losses to teams like St. John's, Princeton and Yale as something to build on for next season.

"A lot of the team has done really well, but not quite well enough to pull off those crucial wins," said freshman Mark Lee just before IFAs.

The women's team emerged slightly scathed from a year in which it had to cope with a lack of depth among its epee squad and a lack of experience among the foils.

"Harvard women's fencing is in a transition year," said senior foil and captain Jill Katz.

The team hopes to end the transition next season, as it returns, among others, freshman Tamara Knutsen--who took 15th in foil at IFAs--and junior epee Valerie Uzzell, who finished eighth at IFAs.