While most Princeton students spent last week sleeping in and recovering from midterms, the men's and women's fencing teams allowed themselves no such luxury. Both Tiger squads stayed on campus the whole week to participate in two-a-day practices, with all of their hard work culminating in a weekend tournament at Penn State.
New head coach Zoltan Dudas now leads the team. Dudas took over from former head coach Michel Sebastiani who retired at the end of last season after winning the U.S. Fencing Association's Schreff Sword — given to the coach voted by his peers the Most Outstanding Collegiate Fencing Coach of the Year. In his 25-year tenure at Princeton, Sebastiani won this award twice and coached many Princeton fencers to national titles and appearances in the Olympics.
While filling Sebastiani's shoes may appear to be an extremely large task, Dudas has the potential to match, if not surpass, the former coach's legacy. Dudas is fresh off of a five-year stint as assistant coach of the Notre Dame Fencing Team which placed fourth at last year's NCAA national tournament — a finish that topped Princeton's eighth place. As Dudas is primarily an epee coach, he hired Hristo Hristov as his assistant coach to focus on working with the sabre fencers.
Coming off of a season which saw the Tigers send six fencers to the NCAA championships in Houston, Princeton looks poised to exceed last year's feats. The returning upperclassmen started leading the team early this year, conducting captain's practices within the first few weeks of school. Official off-season practices with Dudas began Oct. 15 and kicked into full gear last week with conditioning practices each morning and two hours of fencing each afternoon. It wasn't all work and no play, however, as the team was able to break into their individual epee, foil and sabre squads for bonding and teambuilding.
This combination of grueling practices, relationship building and pure talent seemed to pay off for the Tigers this past weekend in their first tournament of the 2006-2007 season. The women's team competed on Saturday and placed athletes in the top 25 of each weapon.
Leading the way for the epee fencers were senior Erin McGarry, who finished sixth overall, and freshman Chandler Clay, who managed place an impressive 16th in her first collegiate tournament.
In foil, freshman standout Jocelyn Svensouk fenced her way to a Princeton-best eighth-place finish, narrowly falling to Abby Emerson of Penn in the second round of single elimination play. Senior squad captain Sara Jew-Lim placed 33rd overall, with freshmen Karen Petsche and Ann Gong finishing right on her heels in 36th and 37th places, respectively. With four fencers placing within the top 40 competitors, the women's foil team looks to be especially strong this year.
Capping off competition on the women's side, junior sabre Cara DiGirolamo fought her way to 22nd place and earned the highest rank among the Princeton sabres.
On the men's side, individual results were just as strong. Foil competitors had the most success, as senior co-captain Alejandro Bras led the Tigers with a finish of 10th overall, followed by freshman star Clayton Flanders in the 15th spot, junior Douglas Hohensee came in 33rd and senior squad captain John-Paul Mitchell placed 42nd.
Both Bras and Flanders competed well enough in the opening pool play to give themselves berths in the finals bracket. Both met the same fate, however, falling in their opening round bout.
In epee, sophomore squad captain Max Peck led the Tigers in the absence of team co-captain Tommi Hurme — who is abroad for the semester — placing 15th overall. Senior Gregory Haislip made it to the third consolation bout before being taken down, to round out the Princetonians in the top 50 at 45th.
Finishing out the day, freshmen sabres took the tournament by storm as Paul Boswell, Thomas Abend and Gregory Hohensee placed 21st, 22nd and 27th, respectively.
While Princeton's fencing season doesn't get fully under way until its first regular season competition on Dec. 2 at NYU and first Ivy League competition in Feb. 11 at Philadelphia, the Tigers look as strong as ever.
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