No IFAs miracle for Penn

The Penn women's fencing team approached last Saturday's Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships with the hopes of erasing the memory of a mediocre season. While the Quakers (7-6, 2-2 Ivy League) did not pull off a miracle and win the entire tournament, they did manage to win a majority of their bouts to make themselves known to the rest of the teams. All year, Penn has been comprised of mostly freshman and sophomores with experienced players sprinkled throughout. In this tournament, however, the youthful attitudes and charisma of the younger players prevailed as the Red and Blue finished a respectable fifth out of 12 teams. The Quakers' foil team finished sixth overall, and the epee team finished in fifth place for the combined team placing. The championships contained four brackets, "A" through "D" in each of the foil and epee portions of the match. Only fencers from the top three brackets were eligible to compete in the individual tournament on Sunday. The Quakers' foil team consisted of three first year fighters -- Margo Katz, Agnieszka Gromulska and Amy Hozer. The fourth fighter was junior Cynthia Kwan who competed in bracket "A" during the competition. Kwan finished ninth overall as she only managed to eke out three victories in a very competitive division. The best performance for the Quakers on the foil side came from freshman Hozer who managed to win 10 of 11 bouts and place second in her bracket. This, coupled with the solid fencing of Katz's six wins and Gromulska's five wins, seemed to exhibit a change in attitude of the fencing team as a whole. "I was not upset at all with how we fenced this weekend," Penn coach Dave Micahnik said. "We seemed to have an upturn in performance and attitude. We went out there and fenced capable of our ability." The more experienced epee team also turned in a solid performance. The four person team consisted of Quakers sophomore Meredith Galto, junior Olivia Leon and senior captain Elizabeth Cornfield. The two strongest performances were given by Cornfield who placed second in bracket "D," and Galto who qualified for the individual tournament on Sunday by winning all of her preliminary bouts on Saturday. Last year, Galto fought as a foil fighter and converted to epee fighting at the beginning of this year. Even though she is relatively new to this side of fencing it did not prevent her from having a solid year and from performing impressively in the championships. "Meredith has fenced remarkably well for her first season," said Micahnik. "She fought very well on Saturday, and just didn't seem to give quite the same effort in Sunday's bouts." While Galto went on to place eighth overall in the individuals, her strong performance on Saturday was instrumental in the team score. The Quakers showed in this tournament that they had the heart to compete with the stronger teams. While their season may have been filled with lackluster meets, when the pressure to perform was increased they rose to the occasion and remained competitive.