Thompson wins silver medal for men's fencing at NCAAs

Wrestling junior Greg Parker was not the only Tiger to garner national attention over this past weekend.

While Parker was wrestling his way through a rib injury in the NCAA championship tournament, sophomore Soren Thompson also competing for a national championship.

Unfortunately for Thompson and the men's fencing team, he – like Parker – came up just short of the national title.

The good news, however, was that Thompson did manage to win second place and a silver medal at the 2002 NCAA Fencing Champ-ionship held at nearby Drew University.

The Tigers finished eighth as a team in the national competition.

Thompson lost out in the championship bout of men's epee to Arpad Horvath of St. John's University, 15-9.

While the sophomore's run through the tournament did not end with a championship, Thompson did record tournament bests in several statistical categories. He earned 20 victories with 108 touches scored and 50 touches received; both of his touch scores were good enough for tournament bests.

Second place

As a team, the Tigers, who had a total of 81 wins over the course of the tournament, finished one spot behind Ivy League rival Yale – the Elis tallied 92 wins to finish tied for sixth with Stanford.

Princeton also edged out Penn, which finished in ninth place over all with 68 wins.

The Penn State Nitany Lions took home the team national title with an impressive 195 total victories over the course of championship weekend.

Other top men's finishers for Princeton included junior foil Ed Chou – who placed 17th with eight victories – and sophomore foil Eric Stodola who finished 21st with six wins.

On the women's side, the Tigers' highest finisher was senior captain and epee Lindsay Campbell, who finished in sixth place with 16 victories.

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Campbell tallied 102 touched scored to only 73 touches received giving her one of the top indicator scores – the difference between the two touch scores – in the women's competition.

As a team, the women recorded more individual victories for the Tigers than the men, 30-28. The only event in which Princeton did not win a bout was the women's foil.

With the end of this season, the Tigers will look to build on the success they had at the national level this year. With a large percentage of the team returning for next season, Princeton should have a good shot at moving up even further into the top ten teams in the country in the future.