Fencing Falls Short at IFA Championships

If anything, this weekend's Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships at the Gordon Track and Tennis Center showed that Harvard, though a team on the rise, lacks the stranglehold it had on the sport when the IFAs were born.

Of course, they didn't have to experience 13 bouts in twelve hours back in the 1890s.

This weekend, Harvard hosted the IFAs, and left with mixed results. The women entered the tournament with very high expectations on the strength of a 14-1 record. Their overall sixth-place finish in the three-weapon competition seemed a bit disappointing, especially since Penn, whom they had defeated 19-8 a month earlier, finished fourth.

The men's team came in eleventh place in the three-weapon, and the two squads combined for an eighth-place six-weapon finish.

"This helps us set our goals for next year," women's captain Elizabeth Aranow said. "We didn't really feel that our season record was reflected in these results."

The Crimson women featured several outstanding individual performances. Sophomore Emily Katz, a seventh-place finisher in the NCAAs last year, was one of two female foilists to qualify for yesterday's individual competition. Katz barely made it into yesterday's bracket, picking up the final qualifying spot in Group A, but went on to take third place overall in the foil.

Fellow sophomore Ellen Schulz also qualified for yesterday's individual action.

The Crimson women also received solid performances from their underclassmen. Sophomore saber Sian Kleindienst performed beyond expectations in the third slot, and freshman Liz Blase finished third in Group C with an impressive 10-2 record, falling just short of the second-place qualifying spot.

The overall results were still a bit disappointing, given the Crimson's record. Harvard seemed especially affected by the grueling tournament schedule. Saturday's bouts began at 8 a.m., and went continuously until 6:30 that evening. The rapid-fire nature of the bouts contrasted sharply with the more casual pace of the dual meets in which the Crimson has thrived all year.

"The way this tournament's set up, it's a lot more endurance than anything," Aranow said. "The psychological aspect is very different, too. You don't get to spend several hours psyching yourself for a single opponent."

The foilists continued to anchor the Crimson, finishing a collective 28-10 in the team standings. The saber squad finished fifth, and the epee squad finished twelfth of 14 teams.

The Crimson men finished eleventh overall in the 3-weapon competition, including ninth in the foil and epee and eleventh in the saber. None of the men qualified for individual honors, but freshman Derek Lindblom (6-6 Epee B) came close.

"We finished close to where we expected to," said co-captain Eugene Cha.

"It's a great opportunity to face some excellent competition."

St. John's University dominated the event, finishing first in both the men's and women's 6-weapon point tallies.

The teams will compete at NCAA Regionals at Boston College next weekend, in which the top eight finishers in each event will qualify for the NCAA Championships in Wisconsin.

Katz's finish is a cause for optimism about a return trip to NCAAs.