The Princeton men’s and women’s fencing teams capped their seasons with impressive performances in this weekend’s NCAA championships at Brandeis University. For the sixth year in a row, Princeton placed in the top four in the tournament, taking home an NCAA trophy. After a weekend of tenacious competition, the Tigers clawed their way up to a third-place finish, just outperforming St. John’s University. Ohio State University narrowly finished ahead of the Tigers with a score of 167-160, while the Columbia Lions won their second straight title with 174 points.
The Tigers came into the match on the hunt for a top finish in the tournament. They qualified the maximum 12 fencers for the tournament, including nine previous All-Americans. Only three other schools achieved this feat, which is usually predictive of outstanding team performance at the championships: Columbia, St. John’s and the University of Notre Dame, all of which would finish in the top five. Both the men’s and the women’s teams also claimed Ivy League championship titles this previous year. The squad had both fresh talent and experience — eight of Princeton’s 11 championship competitors from last year were headed back. Expectations coming into Brandeis this weekend were high; freshman qualifying épéeist Charlene Liu noted that the team’s goals were “definitely at least a top three finish going into NCAAs. We qualified the maximum number of fencers who can represent a team at NCAAs so we had a good chance for a great result.”
The fencers didn’t disappoint. The women competed first in the three major events: sabre, foil and épée. After two days of competition, they finished narrowly in third, four points behind first-place Columbia and a mere two behind Notre Dame. Impressively, returning senior sabrist Gracie Stone, a vaunted All-American who has previously claimed third place twice, and Liu both advanced to the finals, where they narrowly fell to Jessie Gottesman-Radanovich of Penn State and Adrianne Jarocki of Harvard, respectively. In addition to Stone and Liu, two other female Princeton fencers, junior foilist Ashley Tsue and senior épéeist Isabel Ford, also clinched All-American honors with top-12 finishes.
The men’s team began competition on Saturday. The first day of matches saw the Tigers place in fifth, falling behind St. John’s and Ohio State, but on the last day of competition on Sunday, stellar individual performances once again propelled the Tigers to third. Four Princeton men won All-American honors: sophomore sabrist Edward Chin, junior sabrist Peter Pak, sophomore foilist Thomas Dudey, and junior épéeist Alex House. Both Chin and House placed in the top five in their competition, and Chin was able to secure a coveted position in the semifinal match. In a tough bout that was deadlocked at 9-9 for much of the time, Chin was eventually eliminated by Penn State’s Andrew Mackiewicz and went on to claim third in the entire tournament.
Though this year’s season may be over, the Tigers are already looking to improve on their performances and reach new heights in next year’s season. Next year, with almost all of the championship squad returning, the Tigers will be looking to wrest the gold away from Columbia. Chin explained, “We want to keep on improving, and we definitely want to keep the streak alive. Hopefully next year we can win.” With their tenacity, drive and talent, any rival should fear the might of the Tigers’ blades.
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