Women's fencing takes Penn State to limit, blasts UNC, NYU

The women's fencing team went into this weekend's meet against Penn State at Rutgers with the goal of seeing where it stands competitively with one of the top teams in the country. What a surprise they were in for.

Despite being a relatively young team, the Tigers came through with one of the best meets they've had in the past few years against Penn State and easily defeated North Carolina and NYU. The Tigers beat the Tarheels 19-8 (foil 7-2, epee 7-2, and sabre 5-4) and NYU 18-9 (foil 7-2, epee 7-2, and sabre 4-5), leaving their only loss to Penn State with a final score of 14-13 (foil 7-2, epee 4-5, and sabre 2-7).

"The meet against Penn State was particularly exciting because they are one of the most challenging schools we fence against," senior captain Mary Dunlop said. "A combination of their strength and the fact that this was our first dual meet of the season always makes them an extremely challenging competitor."

Twenty-four bouts into the contest against the Nittany Lions, the teams were tied at 12. The foil squad was largely responsible for getting Princeton to this point, as sophomore Mindy Rostal led the way at 3-0, and freshmen Inhwa Song and Franziska Albers scored two victories apiece.

Ordinarily, after 24 bouts, there would be one bout remaining in each weapon, but the order of this meet had been disrupted, so the last three were all sabre.

Thus the youngest part of the team had the bulk of the outcome relying on its bouts. A victory from freshman Tal Zamir gave Princeton a 13-12 lead, but the team could not hold on to the last two bouts.

Nevertheless, Princeton's older fencers had nothing but praise for the sabre squad.

"If sabre continues to be so aggressive and tough, we should be in a good position," senior epee Lindsay Campbell said.

Campbell led the way for the epee squad, going 2-1 against the Nittany Lions and 6-0 the rest of the day. Both she and Dunlop beat Penn State's Jessie Burke, the fifth-ranked women's fencer in the U.S.

"My one loss was to Stephanie Eim of Penn State who is an amazing German, World Cup level fencer, so I was pretty happy with it," said Campbell, who was 6-0 in the day's other two matches.

An uncommon amount of pressure was on the younger fencers of the team since four of the nine starters were freshmen. With this being their first time to compete in a college dual meet, the Tigers' performance against Penn State was surprisingly close.

The matchups against NYU and UNC were not nearly as exciting. Senior epee Maya Lawrence and Campbell were both undefeated in the two meets, helping Princeton roll to victory by considerable margins.

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As for where this puts them for the remainder of the season, the team is extremely optimistic.

"I think this positions us really well to fence the Ivy schools starting in January," Campbell said. "Because, generally our epee squad should come out with a winning record — we're usually anywhere from 9-0 to 6-3 against the Ivies in the past in epee. Even offsetting the loss of Mindy [Rostal] in foil, we should come out ahead. I'm actually more confident now about winning Ivies than I was before we fenced Penn State. Even though it was a loss, it was by one bout to one of the best teams in the country."

Rostal will leave the Tigers to go abroad halfway through the season.

"I think we have a lot of potential and we're definitely in the running for the Ivy League Title," Lawrence said.