Women Fencers Have Best Year in Memory

For the women's fencing team, the 1993-94 season was something special.

The squad amassed an 8-3 overall record, finished second in the league with a 4-1 mark, won the Northeast NCAA regional tournament, finished fifth the NCAA tournament and, in the process, beat both Columbia and Yale for the first time ever.

"Of my four years here, this was by far the best," senior captain Mayling Briney says. "We accomplished so many things which would have been unheard of in the past both individually and as a team."

The team's opener, a convincing 11-5 win over Brandies, might have been a portent of the team's imminent success, but it wasn't until the second meet of the season, a triangular with Columbia and Princeton on December 4, that the team knew that it had the talent to put forth a ground-breaking season.

In casual form, the Crimson disposed of the Lions, 9-7, and then tamed the tigers, 11-5.

"Columbia has traditionally been the larger powerhouse," Birney says. "Every year, they beat us. Princeton has usually been up there, too. To beat both of them was an extremely memorable experience."

Although the team had a letdown match on next day against St. John's losing 8-8 on touches, it recovered over Christmas in time for the Yale meet on January 8. At that meet in New Haven, the team came up with another big win, destroying the Bulldogs, 21-6.

After the Yale meet, the team had a month off for exams, and the corrosive effects of that extended hiatus were evident in the team's only Ivy League loss of the season, a February 5 loss on touches to Penn.

The team, however, recovered on the very same day, beating Cornell convincingly, 13-3, and, with the exception of a 9-2 loss to Notre Dame the next day, rolled through the rest of the season. The Crimson garnered convincing wins against NYU, 13-3; Air Force, 15-1; MIT, 16-0; BU, 15-1; and Wellesley, 13-3.

"We sort of hit our stride at that point," Birney says. "Our competition probably wasn't as good as it was at the beginning of the season, and we were better."

Just how much better the Crimson had gotten was evident at Regionals March 5-6. The Crimson dismantled NYU in the first round, 9-3; beat Brandeis in the second round, 9-3; and then beat Yale again in the semi-finals, 9-4, setting up a rematch with St. Johns, which the team beat convincingly, the individual competition, as Birney took first and freshman Viktoria Danics took second.

The team's finish, and Birney and Danics' success, guaranteed each a spot in the NCAA tournament, where the team nicely concluded its season with a fifth-place finish, and Birney and Danics finished 14th and 16th, respectively.

"Nationals was definitely the high-light of the season, because I don't think that we ever imagined that we would finish that high," Birney says. "But that's sort of the way the whole season went. It was a great way to finish off my career here."

WOMEN'S FENCING

Record: 8-3

Ivy League: 4-1

Key Players: Mayling Birney, Viktoria Danics, Sara Crasson

Seniors: Mayling Birney Kristen Hughes