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Coming off a successful showing two weeks ago at the Penn State Invitational, both Penn’s men’s and women’s fencing squads look to continue to harness that momentum at the Philadelphia Invitational.
At the culmination of a spectacular season in which the junior recorded just five losses, Mills emerged the best sabre fencer in American collegiate fencing.
This year, Penn will send nine fencers – six men and three women – to the NCAA Fencing Championships in San Antonio, Texas on Thursday, which will be broadcast on ESPN3.
This week, an announcement of which Penn fencers have qualified for the NCAA Fencing Championships will be made. The announcement follows the NCAA Mid-Atlantic South Regional, which took place Saturday at Lafayette College.
Since the team considers the Round-Robin its most important tournament of the season, there may never be a better time for Penn to have the kind of momentum it has right now.
Saturday morning, the No. 8 Penn men’s fencing team defeated No. 1 Penn State and No. 5 St. John’s at the Temple Invitational before hitting the road with the No. 10 women’s fencing team for the third U.S. Collegiate Weapon Squad Championships hosted by Ohio State on Sunday.
David Xu has taken up the sport of wheelchair fencing under Penn assistant coach Mickey Zeljkovic and is already considering competing in the 2016 Paralympics in Rio de Janeiro.
Midway through the season, Penn men’s and women’s fencing seemed to have defined their statuses at the Philadelphia Invitational, held at Temple Saturday, as they went 6-0 and 4-2 on the day, respectively.
Sophomore year in high school, Mills began traveling 45 minutes into Manhattan in order to practice inside the biggest club in the city – the Fencers Club – with the Peter Westbrook Foundation, a nonprofit which mostly works with inner city youth.
Despite losing to the Nittany Lions, both the men and women were able to register victories over fellow guests Duke, Haverford and North Carolina in their first action of the semester.
The Invitational promises tough competition for fencing as the Quakers take on a handful of teams — in addition to powerhouse Penn State — in the first in a long string of dual meets.
Penn women’s fencing consists only of 14 members, four on the foil squad. With the top three competing in team competitions, every person really matters.
The men finished their day in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., undefeated, easily beating North Carolina, Vassar, Sacred Heart and NYU. The women’s sabre team lost to Temple, 5-4, while the epee team beat the Owls, 5-4.