Following a somewhat discouraging outcome at its last meet in mid-November, the women's fencing team bounced back very well with a 3-1 finish last weekend.
The Jumbos took on some challenging competition in the form of Fairleigh Dickinson, Drew, James Madison, and perennial fencing powerhouse Temple. The team rolled over Drew by a score of 22-5, and topped Fairleigh Dickinson and James Madison by 15-12 counts.
Though not able to pull out a win against Temple, the Jumbos and coach Jason Sachs were encouraged by the 18-9 defeat.
"They're a great team," Sachs said of Temple. "They typically send upwards of four fencers to nationals."
Each competition features nine bouts for each of three groups, epee, foil and sabre with a total of 27 points up for grabs. Whichever squad nets the majority of the points, wins.
Also encouraging to the team was its ability to maintain composure through somewhat of a meltdown midway through the competition, when the epee team fell into a fighting funk. To a novice fencing viewer, the epee's struggles might seem unjustified as the unit boasts the Jumbos' best overall performer in senior Amy Dickinson. However, the rest of the epee squad is comprised of the inexperienced sophomores Frances Harper and Kasha Oska along with freshmen Michelle Lee, Amanda Haley and Diedre Brown. While the epee crew stumbled, the foil and sabre teams picked up the slack.
"With our foil squad we have fencers with more experience, and our sabre team has just started because [until recently] sabre had just been a men's weapon," Dickinson said. "It's harder to be good with the epee."
Possibly even more heartening than the team result was the performance of certain individuals. Dickinson, helped herself in her goal to qualify for the national meet by going 11-1 overall at the competition, including 2-1 against Temple in some of her toughest competition of the year. To qualify for the national meet one must boast both a strong season record as well as a high finish in the regional meet at the end of the season.
"I fenced really well at regionals last year and took seventh out of close to 50 [competitor]," Dickinson said. "I was disappointed that I didn't qualify for nationals because my record was not as good as I would have hoped."
Other solid bouts came from sophomore Lisa Gruender, who finished the meet with a 10-2 record, going 1-2 against Temple competition. Among those falling to Gruender was Temple's Amy Beacher, a former national qualifier.
Before the winter break the team also performed impressively at the Junior Olympic Qualifying meet. The Jumbos saw sophomore Diana Deluca and freshman Kasara Williams both qualify in the sabre competition, as well as freshman Emily Finn in the foil. Both Deluca and Williams plan to attend the Junior Olympics later this year, though Finn remains undecided.
The Jumbos will continue their intense schedule in the upcoming weeks with matches against some of the country's top fencing programs in Rutgers, University of North Carolina, Cornell, and UPenn. They will also face developing rival Boston College, whom the Jumbos beat earlier in the season for the first time.
The team does not expect to win all of its competitions, but hopes to use the coming meets to train for the New England Regional meet on Feb. 24. Tufts took second place at regionals last season.
"Things are really looking up for the season," Sachs said. "We're really beginning to gel as a team. It's getting easier and easier to coach them."
He notes the improvement of the sophomores and freshmen as key to the success this late in the season. The great camaraderie among the team members is also a large reason for the team's success. The fencers are very supportive of each other, and are very unified as a team.
"It's unlike soccer where people know the sport," Dickinson said. "In fencing you start from scratch, and to have fun encourages people to stick with it, even though it is frustrating at first."
