Judges 'Foil' Harvard's Plan For a Clean Sweep

Remove just a single component of a precariously constructed house of cards and the whole thing will soon tumble down.

Just ask the Harvard women’s fencing team.

After defeating MIT (17-8) 16-11 earlier in the afternoon, the Crimson (10-5) was barely bested by underdog Brandeis (18-9), 14-13. Though its opponent’s were roughly equal in skill, the teams fielded by Harvard for the competitions just hours apart were definitely not.

The Crimson usually dominates the saber contests, providing an initial edge few opponents can readily overcome due to Harvard’s strength in the other two weapons.

But that advantage was significantly mitigated when junior Asaya Agulnik—who provides the primary thrust for the Crimson in the event—was scratched due to a long-standing ankle injury aggravated during the earlier contest against the Engineers.

“We had a problem with our saber fencers today because we had one major injury,” said Harvard coach Peter Brand. “We had to put someone in who had no experience whatsoever and I think that hurt us a lot…It was really a deciding factor.”

With Agulnik out of the lineup, the Crimson was defeated 7-2 in the saber, applying intense pressure to the fencers in the other two weapons.

Harvard responded with a dominant performance in the foil, erasing the five-point deficit with a 7-2 win and placing the match squarely in the hands of the epee fencers.

Trading blows, the Crimson and the Judges headed into the final epee bout knotted at four apiece. But Brandeis senior Jessica Lewis-Turner surrendered just one hit in the faceoff, recording five of her own to defeat freshman Jasmine McGlade and seal the victory.

“It’s a great effort for us,” said Judges coach William Shipman. “We haven’t beaten Harvard in a few years and we were surprised that our epee team did as well [as they did]. I really thought they were much stronger than us in epee, but I was wrong and it was an excellent effort from us.”

Men’s Fencing

No similar misfortune befell the men’s fencing team, which easily upstaged MIT (13-9) 19-8 before finishing off Brandeis 15-12 in a battle of the Crimson’s limited premium talent versus the Judges’ depth.

The Crimson’s top performer in each weapon—freshman Enoch Woodhouse in foil and sophomores David Jakus and Julian Rose in saber and epee, respectively—won at least two of his three bouts, with Woodhouse and Jakus going undefeated. With eight points already on the board, Harvard (7-4) needed just six total points from its second and third-best with each sword.

“That’s hard to overcome,” Shipman said. “The top three guys are more experienced and that really makes the difference…In saber and foil we really don’t match up with their number one guy. In order to overcome that we needed to really kill their third guy and we didn’t quite do that.”

Below the top spot in each category, the Judges (13-8) scored a commanding 12-7 victory, highlighting their team depth.

“They’re deep in all their weapons,” Brand said. “They do not have one weak spot whereas we have maybe one or two guys who are really strong and a third guy that doesn’t have as much experience.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.