The fencing team hopes that a mixture of old and new talent will help it succeed in the Ivy League and beyond this season.
On the men’s side, the team looks to rebound from a somewhat disappointing fourth-place performance in the 2011 Ivy League Tournament. Losses to Harvard, Yale and Penn ended the Tigers’ chances at a second straight championship despite some impressive individual performances, including a 13-2 record from senior foilist Alexander Mills, who was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Performer and will captain this year’s squad.
The Tigers improved in the NCAA Tournament, taking the same position in the combined men’s and women’s scoring in a tougher field. Jonathan Yergler, now a junior, was the second-place epeeist in the nation, earning All-America status as the team came in fourth, tying its best finish in program history.
“We’d like to get into the top three, just to improve this time,” Mills said.
The men’s team is a mixture of old and new faces. While Mills and Yergler are certain to play big roles, the Tigers also have high hopes for freshman foilist Robert Daniluk.
“We haven’t seen what he can do yet, but we’re hoping for good things,” Mills said.
For the women, it will be difficult to improve on last season. After winning the Ivy League, the Tigers had a strong NCAA Tournament, finishing with the most individual victories of any women’s team.
Junior saberist Eliza Stone and sophomore foilist Eve Levin were two of the team’s best young fencers last year, earning a pair of silver medals at nationals. Stone’s finish was the best ever for a Princeton saberist in the tournament.
Several young fencers will again join Stone and Levin on the women’s team this year. Saberist Diamond Wheeler and foilist Hyun-Kyung Yuh were both named All-America as freshmen last year and have three promising seasons left at Princeton. The team is also excited to have freshman epeeist Kat Holmes join its ranks.
Both teams have been working hard to prepare for the upcoming season. The initial focus was on individual lessons and conditioning, but it is now on fencing as a team.
There has been special emphasis placed on tactical bouting, in which one or both opponents are somehow limited. The idea is that training for specific situations will help ready the young team, which features many members who have had only a year of experience at the college level.
Though they compete separately, the men’s and women’s teams fence each other in practices, something that head coach Zoltan Dudas says helped the women’s team win the Ivy League last season.
Mills, who was a sophomore when the men won their last championship, has clear goals for his team this season.
“I’d say we want to win Ivies,” Mills said.
“We want the women to repeat as Ivy League champions,” Mills added. “And we want the men to win Ivies again like we did two years ago.”
Though Columbia will pose a tough challenge, as it did last year, the women are seen as the favorite to repeat atop the Ivy League. The men, however, may have a more difficult time in the league tournament.
“It’s kind of an up-for-grabs race among three or four schools,” Mills said.
One such school is Harvard, which is returning almost all of the starts from its 2011 championship team.
The season will begin competition at the Penn State Open later this month and the Penn State Duals in early December.
Those early tests should prove exciting as veterans return to action and younger Tigers get their first opportunities to show what they can do.
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