M. Fencers finish tuneups

The world of fencing has produced such household names as Zoro, Agrippa, Inigo Montoya, The Man in Black and many others. Understanding the instant fame involved in the sport, the Penn men's fencing team travelled to Happy Valley to participate in the Penn State Fencing Open. The second in a series of two preseason individual tournaments (the first was the Temple Open of November 6), the Penn State Tourney featured some of Penn's less-experienced foil-wielders and epee duelers. The much-ballyhooed sabre team, led by senior captain Evan Glanz, stayed home. Once again, the Quakers met with mixed results. Freshman Adam Brown, junior Edward Skyler and sophomore Micha Fox-Rabinowitz led the foils with great success. Fox-Rabinowitz finished an impressive ninth, while Brown followed in 10th. Coach Dave Micahnik was very pleased with these performances. "It was an opening competition, and our people did very well," Micahnik said. "It was a tremendous learning experience, and I was very happy to see our two foil men finish close to the top." The epee team was not quite so fortunate. Freshman sensation Alexandre Edelman, who had a stellar outing at Temple, finished 23rd this weekend, while fellow freshman Edward Cleaver and sophomore Nathan Anderson tied for 33rd. "We are very solid in epee," Anderson said. "We can beat any given team on any given day. It just depends which day it is for our unit." Edelman was more concerned about the upcoming season. "The competition at Penn State was much tougher than it was at Temple," Edelman said. "There was a much larger pool and the stronger teams brought some of their best competitors, and I realized that it is going to be a tough grind. I probably could have done better, but either way it was a good learning experience. "Penn State gave me a new perspective on the competitive nature of this league. I've got some experience now, and I just hope to improve when the season starts. We have a few weeks to prepare, so we should be ready." The team has a few weeks off before the regular season starts, and as soon as the season ends the NCAA tournament will begin. So the year moves pretty quickly once the practice tournaments are over. Micahnik is confident that his team will be ready to compete once the season gets underway. "The preseason is over now," Micahnik said. "There's lots of work to be done, and our team needs some improvement. But we've got some action under our belts and we are going to do some heavy training for the season." "I think we'll have a good year," Anderson said. "We have a good epee team and our sabres are top notch. It's just a matter of proper preparation for the NCAA's." "We've got some great fencers on our team, but none of them are prepared to start competing today," Micahnik said. "They all need the practice, and it's nice to have a few weeks to do some work on our repertoires. Some teams are way ahead of us, but I won't worry about that right now, because you don't win championships in November."