Weightman Hall was host to a colossal victory against Princeton earlier in the week for the men's fencing team, but there were no such heroics in the multi-meet on Saturday at Temple.
Penn's hopes for an Ivy League championship came down to a single meet this weekend. However, the men's fencing team couldn't keep the momentum going from the Princeton win, and fell to Columbia 18-9.
Columbia fenced like a team gunning for the championship; the Lions came out with energy and defeated Penn early in the meet. Columbia started strong and took a huge lead, from which the Quakers would never rebound.
"We were really pumped and ready to take the championship, but they caught us off guard at the beginning," freshman epee fencer Noah Rohrer said. "A couple of early losses put us in a bad mindset, and that really affected our fencing."
Penn head coach Dave Micahnik saw the difference between the Columbia loss and the Princeton win as a failure to slow down the other team's areas of strength.
"Princeton thought they were going to blow us out in epee and we neutralized that," Micahnik said. "Columbia thought they were going to blow us out in sabre, and today we didn't neutralize that. That's a big difference."
While the epee bouts were generally played on an even ground, Columbia took the first three foil bouts, and controlled the sabre the whole meet, thanks to its very strong contingent in that weapon. Penn took a huge hit in that weapon, and couldn't eke out nearly enough bouts in the other weapons to pull out a win.
"Our epee has been quite strong," Rohrer said. "Against Columbia there were a bunch of 5-4 losses, and any other day it could have easily gone the other way."
The foil fencers later won some bouts to make the score for the weapon close, but got off to a slow start that contributed to Columbia's huge lead. The foil team only lost 5-4, but dropped the first three bouts. The Quakers already had a hill to climb six bouts into the 27-bout meet.
"We got crushed early today, and even the most resilient of teams have a hard time playing behind like that," senior captain and foil fencer Steve Gavalas said.
"We didn't do as well as we should have, I believe I should have gone 3-0, but I didn't, I went 1-2," sophomore foil fencer Michael Galligan said. "The [Princeton] fencers were more classical, and fell into our style. Here they were doing all sorts of weird stuff we were not used to."
Although they couldn't bring home a championship, the Quakers fenced well in the tough Ivy League, and are still happy with the way they competed.
"I fenced well, and our team had their moments and they fenced well," Gavalas said. "However, it would have been nice to have fought a little harder today."
The loss to Columbia clearly took the energy out of Penn, as the Quakers went on to fall to Penn State, 20-7, and St. John's, 17-10.
The women's team started the day off losing tough meets to Columbia, 15-12, and Penn State, 16-11, but they finished off strong beating Cornell 21-6, Northwestern 18-9, and St. John's 15-12. The loss to Columbia was a tough one, and it could have gone either way.
"They were in a position to win against Columbia," Micahnik said. "They had some winnable bouts [that they lost]. It is disappointing to be in that close range and not pull it out."
