W. Fencing sisters meet in Weightman

Coming off of a tough four-match split last weekend, the Penn women's fencing team gets no reprieve tomorrow when Harvard and St. John's come to Weightman Gym for a tri-meet. This is the team's last regular-season home meet of '98. The Quakers (7-5, 0-2 Ivy League) start at 10 a.m. against Harvard (7-2, 3-0), and after a bye round, face St. John's early in the afternoon. "We need to beat Harvard," coach Dave Micahnik said. "We'd like to beat St. John's, but we need to beat Harvard." Harvard is coming off a second-place Ivy finish a year ago. The Crimson handled the Quakers rather easily, 22-10, last year, so a victory in tomorrow's match will by no means be an easy task. An interesting aspect of the Quakers-Crimson matchup will be a sibling rivalry. Harvard captain and senior foil Jill Katz is the older sister of Penn sophomore foil Margo Katz. "It'll be an intense bout.? There will be pressure from my team to win," said the Quakers' Katz. "I'll be nervous, but I'm definitely going to try harder." When they met in last year's meet, the elder Katz came back to win 5-4. The two met again last summer at the Maccabiah Games -- a "Jewish Olympics" held in Israel the year after every Summer Olympics -- with Penn's Katz prevailing. In addition to Katz, a first team All-Ivy and second team All-American in '97, the Crimson feature strong epees in junior Valerie Uzzell and senior Meredith Trauner. Uzzell was on the Junior Olympic team in '95 and '97, while Trauner has gone to the NCAA regionals the past two years. Once the morning match with Harvard is over, the road doesn't get any easier for the Quakers. The St. John's match promises to be as difficult as the Harvard one, if not more so. The Red Storm feature a strong epee in senior Nicole Dygert. "Their epee drove us crazy last year," Micahnik said. "[St. John's] are strong and deep. We have to take them very seriously." Facing loaded foil squads on the latter two teams, the Quakers' foil didn't put up numerically impressive results. The team is still confident, though, headed into tomorrow. "We've put Yale behind us," said foiler Katz. "We can't think about another match when we're out there fencing." In the Quakers recent matches, close individual bouts have been the norm. Unfortunately, the Quakers have come up on the wrong end of many of these decisions. At this second-to-last meet of the year, the Quakers need to be the stronger team, both mentally and physically, if they are to win either of their weekend matches.

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