Saved By the Bell

Imagine achieving your greatest triumph almost too soon. Imagine opening up the season by beating the Hurricanes—Miami, not Carolina—or sweeping the Yankees in the first April series. Imagine how anxious you’d be to get back on the field and do it all again.

Then imagine having to wait two months. Welcome to the third floor of the Malkin Athletic Center, where the Harvard fencing team passes the time before practices by playing a little Ultimate Frisbee. Co-captain Ben Schmidt leaps after a battered-looking disc thrown by freshman foil Ian Polonsky. Okay, last point.

Wait, wait, wait.

Game’s over. Suit up. Walk past the part of the room where coach Peter Brand posted the Columbia Spectator’s account of the Harvard men’s team’s 14-13 upset of Columbia on Nov. 24. In the article, Columbia whined about equipment failure and personnel and offered Pat Riley-esque reflections on what happens when gun machines meet knives. You learn from competitors even when you haven’t faced any for a while.

Wait, wait, wait.

Women’s junior sabre Eunice Yi relaxes before suiting up for practice and responds to a question about the movies. In the newest James Bond flick, Die Another Day, two of the villains met on the Harvard fencing team.

“A lot of us have something about it on our away message profiles,” Yi says. “But not everybody’s seen the movie yet.”

And she gets ready to clash with men’s co-captain Scott Silver or whoever else is around at the time. They haven’t had anyone else to fence against at the MAC in weeks.

Wait, wait, wait.

In a side room, former Chinese Olympic Team coach and current Harvard assistant Guogang Wen works one-on-one with one of the athletes and, a few yards away, Brand sits down and chats with a Crimson reporter.

It has not only been more than six weeks since the Harvard men beat Columbia for the first time since 1978, but also since the Crimson competed at all. A scheduling quirk involving Brandeis’ exams postponed the only scheduled December meet. And so the fencers meet every afternoon, sparring in the same old anonymity but with a new boundless promise surrounding their seasons (the women came within three points of beating their Lion counterparts and were fifth at IFAs in a banner year in 2002).

Brand, in his fourth year as Harvard’s head man after a six-year stint at Brown, talks about what it takes to win.

“There wasn’t always much of an emphasis on recruiting here,” he says. “But to win, you have to have the horses.” Brand’s freshman class is one of the best in all of college fencing. Julian Rose, who went 3-0 in the epee against the Lions, is a World Championship veteran. Tim Hagermen and David Jakus are sick sabers who have more than kept themselves busy despite the inactivity—Hagermen was the third-highest American finisher at a recent Senior World Cup event, and Jakus competed in Hungary. Both sabers were recruited from the fencing hotbed of New York City, right beneath Columbia’s nose.

These three form the core of a class with Fab Five-caliber potential—only these guys will stay in school for four years. None of them was alive the last time the Harvard men beat Columbia. None of them was even an idea. And over the years in between, Harvard fencing had become something of a punch line.

“People used to think that if you fenced in New York and left, you wouldn’t amount to anything,” Brand said. “We want to show that you can come here and still fence very well, and get a great education.”

More and more people are becoming convinced, including Columbia and the crowd of about 200 people who watched the upset in New York. Among the 200, no doubt, were a handful of the city’s high school prospects. The wheels have been set in motion; the horses will keep coming.

Brand speaks with an almost serene confidence. He speaks glowingly of the recently-hired Wen, whom he likes because of his balanced appreciation for the student athlete. He speaks glowingly of the Harvard athletic administration, whose support is apparently vastly better than Brown’s was. He speaks glowingly of women’s co-captain Liz Blase, who checks in before visiting the trainer. He speaks glowingly of the program’s progress and the “great experience” of having fun and learning at Harvard that he says trumps even competitive results. Resplendent in his protective jacket, Peter Brand is the happiest person you’ll ever see dressed like a bomb squad employee.

You can’t fit 200-plus spectators in the fencing team’s home on the third floor of the MAC, not without great difficulty and a fire code violation or two. The Athletic Department may soon have to address that situation. When the MAC is renovated, the administration should make sure that the fencing headquarters is a place fit for the throngs who could watch future Columbia teams roll into town to die another day.

—Staff writer Martin S. Bell can be reached at msbell@fas.harvard.edu.