W. Fencing fares better than M. Fencing at Penn State meet

The Penn fencing team rose before the sun did Saturday morning and before the day was through, the athletes had combined to compete in 224 bouts. The Penn State Multi-Meet, which marked the opening of the season, matched the Quakers against Stanford, Notre Dame, Duke and Haverford. The women came away with three victories, trouncing Haverford 29-3, beating Duke by a 21-11 mark and edging Stanford 17-15. They fell to Notre Dame, however, 21-11. The men fared worse, with their only win coming at the expense of Haverford, 24-3. Penn lost to Duke, Stanford and Notre Dame by scores of 16-11, 15-12 and 19-8, respectively. The women's defeat of national title-contender Stanford was not quite as impressive as the Quakers had hoped. While Penn brought the minimum eight fencers to fill its lineup, the Cardinal carried only five, forfeiting a total of 12 points. Penn coach Dave Micahnik speculated that Stanford will continue to be indifferent towards its entire dual meet season in order to focus on NCAA tournament competition. "It's not as satisfying as if we'd actually beaten them, but years from now it'll look like a win," Micahnik said. Included in the 20 Penn-Stanford bouts was a quality foil win from junior Margo Katz over Uda Breden, a fencer who defeated Katz last year. "I think Stanford had the attitude that they would win every bout they contested against us," Katz said. As expected, the men and women both dominated Haverford, a very young team just "needing to get some experience in competition," according to Micahnik. The only negative on the day for the women was the loss to Notre Dame. Although Penn knew the Irish were a powerful team, the Quakers still felt they had a shot. "They were not an unbeatable team, but they were okay," Micahnik said. "They had balance." "We had a good meet, but we could have done much better. We should have beaten Notre Dame," senior foiler Agnieszka Gromulska said. Gromulska and Katz led the foil attack, each notching 12-4 records on the day. The men dropped heartbreaking decisions to both Stanford and Duke. Hurting without stars Cliff Bayer and David Cohen, the Quakers could only muster one foil win over the Cardinal. "We had 11 points after the epee and sabre and we needed 3 of the foil bouts," Micahnik said. "We had Yaron Roth and two of our reserves; they don't have the experience and we couldn't get the three wins. "Stanford has a very strong foil team. It's not that we didn't give it a good shot, but that's reality." Penn built an early lead over Duke but could not hold on for the win. "It was still winnable halfway through the epee, but we lost the last four epee matches," Micahnik said. "I really thought we'd beat Duke. I didn't expect to lose the epee. "They made some rookie mistakes. That's why they're rookies. Not to condemn them, but we need to fix them fast." The brightest spot on the men's side was the performance of sophomore sabre Michael Golia. Golia, an All-American, defeated Notre Dame's Luke Lavalle, 5 touches to 2. Lavalle was the NCAA champion who beat Golia in last year's final. While pleased with his win over Lavalle, Golia was not totally happy with the results. "I think we should have beaten Stanford and Duke," Golia said. "Duke was a mental lapse." The fencers travel to Yale next Saturday and then to MIT Sunday for what should be a grueling day-long multi-meet similar to the one at Penn State. "We did just as well in the beginning of the meet as in the end," Katz said. "After waking up at 5:45 a.m., we maintained our endurance and talent throughout the entire afternoon."