Last Saturday, January 27, the Stevens Women’s and Men’s Fencing team competed in the Eric Sollee Invitational hosted at Brandeis University in Massachusetts for their first meet of the semester. They went against both D1 and D3 colleges, including Boston College, Brown, and MIT, showing the diversity in teams in fencing. The team did an amazing job and had good results, even against such tough opponents, and hopefully these results hint at how they’ll do in the future.
The women’s epee team went 26-37, with two wins overall, and their biggest win being against Boston College, with a score of 7-2. The men’s epee team went 30-15 with three wins overall, and their biggest win being against Hunter College, with a score of 8-1. Graduate student Claire McNeill, the women’s epee captain, had 12 wins total, and first-year Grace Hicks had 10 total. These impressive results prove the strength of the women’s epee team. “We did pretty good. Epee had a good amount of wins. Both other weapons were doing good as well. We came to fence and that’s what we did.” said first-year Riley Parker, a men’s epee fencer,who had the highest number of wins on the men’s team.
The men’s saber team had two wins overall and went 26-19 with their biggest win being 9-0 against Hunter College, and the women’s saber team went 26-37 with two wins as well, and, like the men’s saber team, their biggest win being 9-0 against Hunter College. Junior Colin Mahoney had the highest number of wins on the men’s team, with eight wins, and senior Alana Schmitt had the highest number of wins on the women’s team, with 10 wins. The saber fencers worked as hard as they trained and overcame the odds.
The women’s foil team went 17-46 with one win, that being a 6-3 win against Hunter College, and the men’s foil team went 20-25 and had 2 wins with their biggest win being 8-1 against Hunter College as well. Junior Elizabeth MacDonald had the highest number of wins on the women’s team with seven wins, and sophomore James Glover had the highest number of wins on the men’s team with five wins. The foil fencers fenced hard through their losses and held the team together.
In total, the women’s team ended up with 69 wins and 120 losses and the men’s team ended up with 76 wins and 59 losses. Everyone put a lot of effort in and their rewards paid off with their wins. “[It] was a tough day with some D1’s and some of the top D3 teams but we came out with a win and fought hard,” said assistant coach for the women’s team Linda Vollkommer-Lynch.
The women’s team will return on February 4 for the Stevens Invitational held inside Canavan Arena. The men’s team will also return on February 4 for the MACFA Round Robin Group “B” Meet, also held inside Canavan Arena at Stevens.
