Tigers win three, lose one

The Princeton men's and women's fencing teams normally practice together and travel together, and quite often the men and women even compete together. It's only fitting, therefore, that they should record complementary records. Both squads went 3-1 this weekend at their four-way meet at Penn State on Saturday, falling to Penn State, the ultimate invitational champion, but defeating Rutgers, North Carolina and NYU.

The men's squad's most dominant victory came against NYU in its first contest early Saturday morning. Led by their epée division, the men won nearly all of their matches against the Violets.

The men's foil squad also put up an impressive record against NYU. Junior foil J.P. Mitchell felt part of Princeton's prowess against the Violets had to do with its readiness for the matches.

"I think we had an advantage over most fencing teams," Mitchell said. "We were there first, warming up as a team. We were more ready to go than the others."

The Tigers continued their strong performances throughout the day, though they could not overcome the Nittany Lions.

"[We] really dominated as a whole," senior epée Ben Solomon said. "Everyone on the squad fenced tremendously well, including freshmen Max Peck and Noah Arjomand, for whom it was their first dual meet."

Solomon fenced well himself, going 11-0 for the day. He even beat Penn State's Arthur Urhman, who had defeated him at the Garrett Open last month.

"This meet was a superb start to the season," Solomon said. "As a team, we performed as well as I've ever seen us perform in my time at Princeton. I think that there are big things in store for the rest of the season."

Mirror image

The women's team defeated NYU, 18-9. Tiger foils senior Jacqueline Leahy and junior Sara Jew-Lim went 3-0 against the Violets, and the foil squad went 7-2.

Jew-Lim had a tough match against NYU's senior captain Kristen Wentrcek to start off her day, but she was able to pull off a tight 5-4 victory. Jew-Lim went 9-3 for the day, her three losses coming against Penn State.

Leahy went 12-0 this weekend, though she also struggled a little in her first match of the day. After one bout was tied at two, Leahy won 13 points in a row over the course of her matches against the Violets.

Sophomore Peri Rosenstein, who recently switched weapons from epée to foil, had a solid weekend. The match against NYU was her first dual meet experience with the new weapon.

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"We weren't sure how [Rosenstein] was going to do because of the switch," Leahy said. "Her performance was much better than even she thought it was going to be."

The women's epée and saber squads continued the positive trend for Princeton, as the two squads combined for 11 wins and seven losses against NYU.

Room for improvement

Despite the losses to Penn State, both squads felt pleased with the performance they displayed at the weekend tournament. Still, they recognized that they have many adjustments to make before taking on more challenging competitors.

"NYU always fields a solid team, but they are not in the same class as Columbia, Harvard and UPenn," Solomon said. "In order to beat those teams we will need to fence even better than we did against NYU."