Strong Start, Finish Bookend Difficult League Campaign

In what was supposed to be a rebuilding year, the Harvard fencing team showed that even in off years it will be a force to be reckoned with, finishing sixth nationally for the second consecutive season.

Lacking the star power of years past with foilist Emily Cross and epeeist Benji Ungar off training for this summer’s Olympics, both the women and men far exceeded expectations. Despite a trio of epeeists that included only one experienced fencer, the women posted an undefeated fall season, winning the first annual Beanpot tournament and even beating perennial juggernaut and 2007 national champion Penn State.

The men fared only slightly worse, taking second behind Brandeis by the slimmest of margins, 14-13, in the Beanpot as well as dropping contests to Penn State and NYU to finish the fall season 4-2.

“I think [those wins] certainly gave us some confidence, and [for] the women, having shown some trepidation about the strength or lack thereof of the team, winning those couple of matches, especially those ones against Penn State, served us well going into the Ivy League matches,” head coach Peter Brand said.

But the tests rolled in during the spring season with the ever-competitive Ivy League stepping in to slow down the red hot Crimson. Clearly overmatched by two strong Columbia squads, both the men and women fell to the Lions as well as Penn, while the women also dropped a close 14-13 contest to Brown. Each team finished third in the Ancient Eight.

“The break in the middle really took away some of our momentum,” co-captain Samantha Parker said. “It was hard to come back and just start fencing again after intersession...It was hard to do that when we didn’t have as strong a team as we did in years past.”

At Regionals there were those who shined and others who fell flat in qualifying to perform on the national stage. In the end, the Crimson sent 10 fencers to New Haven to compete in the NCAA tournament in March, including sophomore epeeist Billy Stallings, who took gold at the Northeast Regional competition. While only qualifying 10 of a possible 12 fencers gave Harvard almost no chance at winning, the squad managed to beat out numerous other schools for sixth behind All-American performances from saberists senior Alexa Weingarden, freshman Alexandra Sneider, and senior Steve Ahn, as well as senior epeeist Teddy Sherrill.

“Going into NCAAs, a lot of the pressure was off for the end of the season,” Parker said. “I think people just went, had a lot of fun, worked really hard, and wanted to end on an up note.”

With Cross and Ungar returning to join three stellar recruits in the form of both a men’s and a women’s epeeist in addition to a women’s saberist, the team will look to repeat its national championship glory of 2006 with a set of fencers that will likely have just one weak link—the men’s saber squad.

“We’re going to have a comparable team [to the 2006 squad] with the exception being men’s saber, and that, in terms of the national view of things, may hurt us...that’ll be the only stumbling block,” Brand said. “In the Ivy League, we’re certainly going to be contending for the championship on both the men’s and women’s sides. We’re definitely going to have a chance. I hate to predict, but on paper we look much stronger.”

—Staff writer Madeleine I. Shapiro can be reached at mshapiro@fas.harvard.edu.