M. Fencng second at IFA meet

Princeton might have taken the Ivy League title away from the Penn men's fencing team this season, but the Quakers got revenge when they edged the Tigers by one point and took second place at the Intercollegiate Fencing Association championships at Yale over the weekend. While fencing powerhouse St. John's won the men's three-weapon overall competition in addition to finishing first in both the sabre and epee events, Penn was second to the Red Storm in the overall and with the sabre. The Quakers finished fourth with the foil, one spot behind St. John's again. Penn's most impressive win came from junior sabre Mike Golia, who placed first in the individual sabre championship. Golia started out with a less-than-stellar performance on Saturday, a day when the Quakers fenced against 12 schools during a tiring 13-hour day at Yale's Lanman Center. "Going in there, I just wanted to beat a couple of people," Golia said. "I never thought I was going to win this competition because there are some really tough fencers." Golia barely made it to Sunday's individual tournament. To qualify for Sunday, he needed to finish in the top six in the elite sabre A pool -- and he ended up sixth. On Sunday, twelve fencers -- six from the A pool, four from the B pool and two from the C pool -- competed in a round robin. Eight moved on to compete in the final round robin. Once again, Golia was the last seed. But in the final round robin, Golia went 7-0, never allowing his opponents more than three touches. "On Sunday a lot of people came up to me and said, 'I've never seen you fence better,'" Golia said. "I just fenced a great day on Sunday." Golia's most memorable victory on Sunday was over the Red Storm's Ivan Lee, a member of the junior national team who beat Golia on Saturday. "Anyone watching those two guys fence would have no question that fencing was an athletic sport," Penn coach Dave Micahnik said. "It was an extraordinary bout." Golia wasn't the only Quaker who qualified for the individual championships on Sunday. Sophomore sabres Daniel Vincent and Jeff Lee both made it to the second day, but were ousted in the preliminaries of the round robin. Penn junior foilist David Cohen, who won the foil competition last year, also qualified for the individuals. This year, Cohen only finished fourth -- but he did beat Columbia's Jed Dupree, who won the foil event. In the epee, Penn sophomore Jim Benson won seven bouts and just missed making the individual tournament, and sophomore Scott Eriksen went 5-1 before he had to withdraw due to a pulled hip flexor. Eriksen was replaced by Penn freshman Javier Garcia-Albea, who made an impressive IFA debut by winning approximately two-thirds of his bouts. Eriksen wasn't the only injured Red and Blue fencer. Despite fencing with a previously sprained ankle, senior captain David Liu, a foilist, won 10 of his bouts on Saturday and nearly made the cutoff for Sunday. "It was a decent performance," Micahnik said. "With a few more bouts here and there we might have got a higher score, but I don't necessarily think we would have had the balance to beat St. John's." And while Micahnik is happy about placing second overall, he still knows that the Quakers could have done better. "We didn't win everything there, so I'm not satisfied," he said. "That's just the way it is."