After entering winter break having lost eight straight contests, the fencing team enjoyed a bounce-back of sorts this past weekend, splitting its matches 2-2 at the Wellesley Fencing Invitational and bringing its overall record to 4-10.
Saturday saw the Jumbos square off against four teams in a round-robin style tournament. While they claimed a 16-11 victory over the Hunter Hawks and a 17-10 win over the UMass Minutemen, the Jumbos also fell in lopsided fashion to the Cornell Big Red 21-6 and again at the hands of host Wellesley Blue 17-10.
Overall, the epee and foil squads posted relatively strong showings against both the Hawks and the Minutemen but had difficulties with both Wellesley and Cornell. Sabre blanked on all four of its matches.
"Sabre is improving," coach Jason Sachs said. "They didn't have a good run against Wellesley, but [junior Lauren Kaplan] has just come back from abroad, and we have strong freshmen."
Kaplan will provide a welcome relief and needed experience to the young sabre team, which was made up of all freshmen and one sophomore prior to her return.
Tufts faced Hunter as the first team of the day. Although Hunter has traditionally been a weaker fencing team, the Hawks still posed a challenge to both Jumbo epee and sabre.
While epee took a narrow 5-4 win, sabre came up short 5-4. The foil squad, on the other hand, picked up a solid 7-2 victory to seal the Hawks' fate. Junior foilist Christine Lee made a standout effort, winning all three of her bouts.
Against the Minutemen, the Jumbo epee squad performed especially well and swept 9-0, adding on to their 5-4 showing over the Hunter epeeists. Sophomore epeeist Rebecca Hughes put up a strong effort Saturday for the Jumbos, going 2-1 against both Hunter and Cornell and 2-0 against UMass.
"Becca Hughes had a really strong day," Sachs said.
Div. I Cornell, however, posed the toughest challenge of the day, both for Tufts and other competing teams. The Big Red scored two 6-3 victories over Tufts in both epee and foil and swept sabre 9-0.
"Cornell had a strong sabre team," Sachs said. "They smoked us."
Coming into the tournament this weekend, Cornell sat on a 5-3 season record. By the end of Saturday, the Big Red had placed first in the Wellesley Invitational on Saturday after scoring victories against Tufts and the other three teams entered in the tournament.
In the last round, all three Jumbo squads had difficulty fencing Wellesley, considered a solid rival with strong epee and foil teams and a young sabre squad. Tufts' foils succumbed 7-2, while both epee and sabre fell 5-4.
One highlight of the contest with the Blue was freshman epeeist Coryn Wolk's standout performance. Wolk won all three of her bouts, while Lee managed the only two wins for the foil team.
"Coryn went 2-1 and 3-0 against Cornell and Wellesley," Sachs said. "It was her best fencing all year, and she really seemed to enjoy herself."
"The results were disappointing but inspiring," freshman foilist Nadia Nibbs added. "Wellesley has a very tough foil team, but we're capable of beating them with more practice."
It appears that the Jumbos had a tough time adjusting and finding rhythm on Saturday as they competed in their first tournament after winter break, which included four contests.
The team will get the chance to put last weekend's experience to the test when they join the men's club team for a match with NYU on Sunday.
"I think the team is improving and that the experience from this weekend will fare us well," sophomore sabre Alex Cheetham said.
NYU, a traditionally strong team, has a 4-10 season record this year, the same as Tufts', but the Violets will still pose a difficult test to the Jumbos. The match will begin at 10:30 in Jackson Gym. The men will fence a relay format while the women will use the normal scoring system.
"I'm confident that the rest of the season will be rewarding," Nibbs said.
