Fencers 'take the fifth' at NCAA Championships

While the men's and women's fencing teams combined for a fifth-place finish at last weekend's NCAA Championships in Palo Alto, Calif., one Tiger stole the spotlight for herself.

Freshman foil Eva Petschnigg took home the national individual foil title with a thrilling 15-13 win over Stanford's Monique de Bruin in the finals. The win was the culmination of two grueling days in which the freshman won 20 of 25 bouts.

"The first day I lost three bouts, which I thought was OK," Petsch-nigg said. "The second day I didn't concentrate as well and after the second loss I was afraid I wouldn't even make finals."

Petschnigg's 18 wins and third-place finish in the round robin portion of the competition, however, were enough to qualify her for bracket play and set up a semifinal battle with Penn State's Charlotte Walker.

In that semifinal match, the Tiger found herself only two touches from being eliminated with the score at 13-9. Petschnigg roared back to edge the Nittany Lion 15-14 and move on to the finals.

In that final match for the title, Petschnigg used the experience she had gained the day before in a loss to de Bruin to hold on to the 15-13 win and capture the first-ever national title for the women's team and the first title for Princeton since 1996, when Max Pekarev '99 won the men's sabre.

"Going into the final match I knew what I had to do to beat de Bruin," Petschnigg said. "I didn't know whether I'd be able to beat her, but I knew what I had to do."

While Petschnigg was the only Tiger to reach the semifinals and have a shot at an individual championship, she was not the only Tiger to show well on the national platform.

Princeton finished in a disappointing fifth place as a team, as the 12 Tiger fencers were only able to win 133 bouts in the round-robin competition. That score placed them behind Penn State — which won its sixth consecutive national championship over the weekend with 175 points. Notre Dame and St John's tied for second with 171 and and the home squad, Stanford, won 163 bouts.

The 133 wins did place Princeton ahead of Ivy League rivals Columbia — which had 109 wins — Yale and Penn.

"I think the team could have placed better," Petschnigg said. "We were able to show much better at other tournaments like Ivies and IC4As."

Despite the fifth place finish, the Tigers were not without some stellar individual performances. Senior captain and epee Jason Burrell finished out his collegiate career by tying for third after winning 17 bouts.

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While a third-place finish would have qualified the senior for the semifinals, he had the lowest margin on indicators amongst the three fencers with 17 wins, leaving him in sixth place overall.

Also tallying 17 wins in the competition for the Tigers was sophomore epee Lindsay Campbell who finished sixth. Fellow sophomore Maya Lawrence won fifteen bouts to take eighth in the epee.

"The epee girls not only fenced well this weekend, but they've been great all season," Petsch-nigg said.

After the women's competition was complete on Friday, the Tiger women (15-2) stood in third place with 77 points. The strong effort by the women was spearheaded not only by Petschnigg and the epees, but also by freshman Mindy Rostal, who took ninth place in the foil with 14 wins.

This was the first year that women's sabre was recognized by the NCAA and junior Alexa Chew took 20th place while freshman Ibby Caputo finished 22nd.

"It's so hard to fence 23 bouts in two days. Physically, it's tough, but it's also hard to keep your concentration for so long," Petschnigg said.

Fine form

For the men (14-3), the sabre squad had two top 15 finishers in freshmen James Wallen and Daniel Pratt. The two combined for 18 wins on the weekend, and Wallen continued the fine form that earned him All-Ivy honors.

Junior foil Dustin Reagan and senior foil Aaron Filner finished in 17th and 18th, respectively, and tallied 13 points for the team effort between them.

Rounding out the compliment of Tigers who made the trip out west was senior Steve Wang who finished in 19th in the epee.

Princeton sent 12 — the maximum number of fencers — to the NCAA Tournament for the first time this year. Qualifying 12 is necessary to winning the NCAA title since each fencer needs to have a strong showing for the team to win enough matches.

Next year the Tigers will have to not only have 12 qualify, but they will all have to fence their best for the Tigers to move up amongst the national powerhouses.

"It would have been nice to have four or five people all taking home individual championships instead of just me," Petschnigg said.