Wicas, Hurme earn All-America honors in epee

For being in a rebuilding phase, however, the team was highly successful. Senior captain Tommi Hurme, sophomore Clayton Flanders, and freshmen Graham Wicas and John Stogin all qualified for the NCAA tournament. On the women’s side, junior captain Jasjit Bhinder and freshman Lyuba Docheva both made the tournament.

Early in the season, however, such success was hard to come by, as the team won only three Ivy matches. With so much youth, growth was inevitable.

“It was building year, but toward the end there was a tremendous amount of progress,” Wicas said. “The style of college fencing is different and can be quite frustrating for freshman fencers regardless of their prior experience. Therefore, our results in the beginning of the season were not that stellar, and even into the Ivy League Championships, we arguably underperformed.”

After a difficult beginning, the Tigers hit their stride after winter break and exams. On Jan. 27, Princeton traveled to nearby Madison, N.J., for the Middle Atlantic College Fencing Association Duals. The Tigers swept the competition, racking up six victories by overwhelming margins.

The story of the year was the men’s epee squad, which won the Intercollegiate Fencing Association team championship. Dudas, described by his players as one of the top recruiters in collegiate fencing, landed three star freshmen for the 2007-08 campaign. Led by Wicas, the overall tournament winner, along with freshmen Nate Sulat and Michael Elfassy, the epee squad was ranked among the top in the nation.

Doubly impressive, Bhinder also took the IFA overall women’s title in epee. Other notable IFA results were sophomore Karen Petsche and Elfassy, who came away with silver and bronze metals in foil and epee, respectively. Across all weapons, the Tigers finished fourth in the tournament, behind Columbia, Penn and Harvard.

After the IFA championships, Princeton attended the Mid-Atlantic/South regional qualifier for the NCAA tournament primed for its best performance of the season. Leading the charge for the Tigers were Hurme and Wicas, whose epee performances were again outstanding. The pair met in the finals, with the senior fencer prevailing and taking first to Wicas’ respectable second-place finish. On the women’s side, Bhinder and Docheva placed fifth in epee and sabre respectively. Flanders’ eighth place and Stogin’s ninth, in foil and sabre respectively, were also enough to make the NCAA finals.

Advancing to the NCAA final tournament, the Tigers were poised to advance in the rankings, having finished 10th the past two seasons. Unfortunately for Princeton, it was not meant to be. Led again by Wicas and Hurme on the men’s side and Bhinder on the women’s, Princeton could not garner enough overall points to catch either Stanford or Wayne State, the eighth- and ninth-place teams. Notably, Wicas placed third in the men’s epee, the best Tiger finish in the past few years.

“I am proud that three of our fencers got [an] All-American title,” Dudas said. “The teams [that] are in the top 10 did not change much in the last decade, but we were close to Stanford and Wayne State.”

Dudas is optimistic about the overall state of his team. The Tigers will lose just two men and one woman to graduation. Hurme, however, will be sorely missed.

As a group, the team is confident in its abilities and expects to advance in the rankings next season. Sulat emphasized that the level of competition took the team’s younger members by surprise and cost Princeton a few close defeats.

“I believe that we have the talent, belief and ability to be in the top four in the country,” Sulat said. “This is a developing team, and we’ll continue to grow as the years go on. We have great team spirit, and I expect us to become much stronger.”