Columbia lost its aura of invincibility last night at the Intercollegiate Fencing Association championship in New York as it barely edged out a win over the Quakers at Fencing's first postseason meet.
Only two bouts stood between Penn and the six-weapon team championship last night. In the end the Lions limped out of their den with the win.
The women's three-weapon team beat Columbia by seven bouts.
"The best part of winning is that we learned [Columbia] is not impossible to beat," women's captain Ilana Sinkin said.
The women's seven-bout taming of the Lions wouldn't be enough as the Quakers men's three-weapon team came second to Columbia by nine bouts.
"There were some winnable bouts that got away from us," said coach Dave Micahnik.
The women's sabre team will share a trophy with Harvard after tying for first place.
But women's epee would allow for no such compromise on their way to a first-place finish.
Sinkin credited the strong women's performance to a lack of pressure on the team.
"We all ended up beating people that we didn't beat during the season and the Ivies," Sinkin said.
The reigning IFA foil champions, Penn's men, abdicated their throne last night. They lost the event's most prestigious award, the Little Iron Man trophy, with a disappointing fourth-place finish.
Women's foil one-upped their male counterparts and came in third.
The men's trio of Jon Berkowsky, Matthew Kolasa and Andrew Bielen seemed unstoppable, going 28-2, coming in first in sabre.
Beyond team competition, eight fencers for the Red and Blue made into the round of eight and four took home medals for the individual portion of competition.
Men's senior captain Ron Berkowsky put himself in elite company by winning the foil both freshman and senior years by defeating Columbia's Kurt Getz in the gold-medal round.
"The team that we had this year performed the best [at the IFA's] since I've been here," Berkowsky said.
Rounding out Penn's medal winners were sabre competitor Danielle Kamis, who continued an impressive freshman season with a second-place finish and Kolasa, who took home a bronze.
