Despite having a more well-rounded squad than it did in 2008, the fencing team's standing at New England Championships mirrored its result from last season. Last year, a top finish from epee, a sixth-place finish from foil and a 10th-place finish from sabre placed Tufts sixth in the tournament. This year at Mt. Holyoke, epee fell to fourth, foil held at sixth, and sabre leapt to fourth, culminating in a similar sixth-place finish.
The New England Women's Intercollegiate Fencing Association (NEWIFA) had 15 teams compete in the New England Championships, held the week before the NEWIFA Championships. The format for the event was different from any meet that Tufts has participated in this season, as each school had to rank a fencer A, B or C in each of the three weapons, and then every fencer competed against each fencer in her like-ranked grouping. The normal dual format is for all three combatants of a certain weapon to face each of the opposing fencers with the same weapon.
"For some schools, the difference between the A, B and C fencers isn't that great," junior epee captain Rebecca Hughes said. "For schools like Smith or us, the A, B and C are more or less the same, but a school like Vassar has some girls that are really, really skilled, while some others are only marginally good comparatively. So it turned out to be exactly what we expected."
The epee team was battling various ailments as well as stiffer competition than last year, resulting in a fourth-place finish. Hughes has been suffering from tendonitis in her knees, preventing her from practicing in the last couple of weeks, and neither sophomore Coryn Wolk nor classmate Georgia Ranes was at full health.
"I think we did really well considering the circumstances," Ranes said. "I had to miss practice a lot, and I was a little unsure starting the day off as I hadn't fenced competitively all week and hadn't been doing footwork. But we started out fencing teams that weren't really competitive. They were more club teams, so that was a good warm-up, and it helped."
In the A spot, Wolk won nine of her 14 bouts, while Ranes at B had the most victories of any Tufts fencer with 11, finishing second behind Vassar's B. Wolk and Ranes were recently named Northeast Fencing Conference Second Team All-Stars after both compiled 27-9 records over the course of the year. Hughes rounded out the ladder with an 8-3 record of her own. Vassar, which finished second in epee last year at one victory behind Tufts, sliced through the field of competition, winning 36 of 39 bouts. Also rising in the standings was Boston College. The Eagles held a losing record last year in epee and finished no higher than fourth in any weapon, but this year, they finished no lower than third.
"I never thought of Vassar as one of the strongest fencing squads in the Northeast," Hughes said. "But at the same time, they did beat us, and BC has become one of the stronger teams."
All three epeeists earned resounding wins in duals against MIT, which, despite a sixth place finish in epee, won the overall competition on the strength of a 38-1 showing in sabre.
Tufts' best result may well have come from the sabres. Though freshman Sarah Danly went 4-10 at A, the Jumbos demonstrated their depth in the latter two spots, where junior sabre captain Alexandra Cheetham and sophomore Caccy Bowlus combined for 18 victories in 25 bouts. The 22 wins were a strong improvement over last year's 12.
Tufts' lowest finish came in foil, where senior foil captain Christine Lee, a First Team All-Star in the Northeast Fencing Conference with a 30-6 record this year, struggled at the outset.
"Going into it, I was more focused on the individual aspect of the tournament, but then I started not doing too well," Lee said. "Then I started thinking about it as a team tournament, and I fenced better. We finished sixth, but we were close to the two teams in front of us, so it was exciting at the end."
Although Lee won nine bouts each of the last two years, the competition lapped her this year, as she dropped from second in 2008 to seventh in 2009. Freshman Meredith Paul went 10-4 after not fencing in the previous competition, while sophomore Nadia Nibbs went 5-7.
Next week's NEWIFA Championships will follow a similar format, though top foilist Lee will not be fencing. Paul, Nibbs and junior Naomi Bryant will likely fill out the foil squad.
