W. Fencing drops meet to M.I.T. and earns fifth

After a season of middling league play and repeat solid performances, Penn left the Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships at Boston College this weekend taking fourth in the mixed sixth-man championship and fifth in the three-woman championship. Columbia took the six-man prize and tied for the three-woman prize, reaffirming its dominance in the Ivy League this year. M.I.T. produced surprising results, after spending the entire season below Penn in the rankings. The Engineers defeated the Quakers head-to-head, taking home third in the three-woman event. In the squad competitions, both the Penn sabres and the epees came home with a bronze, with the foil team not far behind at number five. This consistency was the key to Penn's respectable results. "That is what you call a real team performance," Penn coach Dave Micahnik said. "It's a well-balanced team performance." The balanced results are best exemplified by the number of wins each squad produced. The sabres came back with 20 wins while the epees and foils had with 19 and 18, respectively. Penn's different weapons had some hot and cold streaks during the different matches. The individuals were consistent with their yearly records with five individuals leaving the first round and facing the difficult sixteen-player brackets. Of these competitors, epee Livia Rurarz-Huygens was the No. 2 seed in her group with an 8-3 first round record. Teammates Kate Zimmerly and Emanuelle Humblet also had eight wins and Christina Verigan and Christina Kaneshige brought back five. A pleasant surprise of the tourney was Zimmerly's strong performance in the 'B' group. "She seemed to find a style that was more mobile and aggressive," Micahnik said. "That paid at the IFAs." Zimmerly's strong result alongside new-to-the weapon June Hsu (7-4) made the sabre squad's result even better. Rurarz-Huygens emerged with the best individual record at the end of the day, placing fifth in the epees. Although a high seed, she struggled to win a close first match by one and was upset by Princeton's Kira Hohansee in the next round. The lower seed from Princeton went on to take second. This weekend, Penn heads to the Mid-Atlantic and South Regionals at Penn State, where they will be sending 11 individuals to vie for high honors. Good performances in this event will earn births in the individual national tournament. Micahnik will being looking for some strong performances from his fencers. "I want to see how many All-Americans we can get."

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