Fencing squads hobble into Phila. Invitational

By Molin Zhong

Staff Writer

molin@sas.upenn.edu

Bend, but don't break. It's a regularly used cliche, but in this case it also describes the men's and women's fencing teams.

Coming into the Philadelphia Invitational Multi-Meet against Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, and Vassar, tomorrow at Haverford, Pa., both the teams are being tested by absences and injuries to several key players.

On the women's side, the Quakers will be without injured team captain Katelyn Sherry. Sherry also missed the team's first meet this season, which was over a month ago.

"It's definitely an uphill battle," she said. "It's certainly not easy losing a squad member."

Losing Sherry, a sabrist, not only affects her squad, but also the foil as well. Sophomore foilist Abby Emerson noted that because freshman Tammy Levy, normally a foilist, now needs to fill in at sabre, "we don't have any backups" at foilist.

If any one of the foilists goes down, the squad will need to forfeit one match.

The men's team will be without top sabrists Andrew Bielen and Matthew Kolasa. They will be attending the Junior World Cup during the same time as this meet, so the men's sabrists will be forced to insert backups into the lineup.

As if the sabrists' troubles were not enough, freshman Jonathan Berkowsky had anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction last summer and will not be able to fence this year.

Despite coming into the meet undermanned, both the men's and women's teams are confident that they will fence successful meets this Saturday.

"I think that our team is coming together phenomenally," Sherry said, "I think that if we do well this weekend it really sets us up for the rest of the season and the Ivies."

Looking at the lineups of seasoned players they sport, one can still see why both squads took ninth at the NCAA Championships last year.

"Ilana [Sinkin] and I are sophomores, and then Eve [Overton]'s a senior, so we obviously have experience," Emerson said of the women's foil squad. "We won't be jittery."

Furthermore, sophomore epeeist Ben Wieder noted that the men's epee squad has done a lot of fine-tuning of individual skills during the one-month layoff from the first meet to this upcoming one.

"The best thing about epee is that it's unpredictable, so despite what everyone else is saying I think we're going to do a lot better," Wieder said.

So, entering the Philadelphia Multi-Meet, the Quakers will not be at full strength. They have already been bent - the question now is whether or not the team can make it through the weekend without breaking as well.

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