Men's Fencing Loses First Match of the Year at Ivies

Sunday marked an afternoon of tough competition, hard-fought battles, and varied finishes.

The Harvard fencing teams took on Penn, Princeton, and Cornell yesterday in the Ivy League South Championships, the opening leg of the Ancient Eight’s championship series, at Hutchison Gym in Philadelphia, Penn.

The No. 1 men’s squad dropped its first meet of the season, 16-11, to Princeton to open the day, rebounding in the afternoon with a convincing 19-8 victory over Penn.

The third-ranked women handily took their opening two matches, winning 21-6 against Cornell and 17-10 against the Tigers, only to get a scare later in the day when the Quakers threatened to deal them their second loss of the season. But the women prevailed in a 15-12 win.

The men’s loss could hardly have been closer, as the squad posted 5-4 defeats in the saber and foil with epee pulling out a 6-3 win. The problems stemmed from the first round of bouts, when sluggish play put the team in a hole from which it could not recover.

“All my three squads were quite lethargic and trying to come back from behind was tough to do,” Crimson coach Peter Brand said. “Everyone is very pumped when they see Harvard, we were just not there...we’re number one, they’re all gunning for us.”

But the squad quickly overcame the tough loss to battle back with a victory against Penn, a team that itself defeated Princeton early in the day to put Harvard back in the Ivy driver’s seat.

Each individual team responded by turning things around. The men’s epee in particular recovered with an 8-1 win, with junior Edward Sherrill and freshman Billy Stallings each going 3-0.

“I think we were really eager to show what we could do after the defeat,” said captain and saber fencer Tim Hagamen. “I think we were all pretty upset about it, it was tough for us, especially with all of our victories last season and the beginning of this season. We were riding high, it brought us back down, so we were glad to show what we could do again against Penn.”

The women had all they could handle in the form of the Quakers. The foil fencers lost a close 5-4 matchup, in which freshman Artemisha Goldfeder competed despite immense pain from a finger injury sustained earlier in the week. The saber suffered a 6-3 defeat, as freshman Eva Rosenberg posted the only winning record at 2-1.

After suffering a close 5-4 defeat last weekend the women’s epee rebounded by going 9-0 against Boston College on Thursday. The squad maintained its momentum yesterday, going 8-1 to eke out the overall win. Senior Jasmine McGlade and sophomore Maria Larsson each went 3-0.

“They really jelled against BC,” Brand said. “They feed off of each other’s enthusiasm, they’re very pumped for each match, [and] they help each other. They were flawless today as far as I’m concerned.”

Earlier in the day, the Big Red and the Tigers proved no match for the team. With Penn on their minds, the women began the day at a high energy level, using the first two meets as warmups for the toughest competition.

Cornell’s female-only program has yet to develop to be able to compete with the best in the Ivies, and suffered a rout 21-6, with each Crimson squad posting 7-2 wins. In the win against Princeton, it was the domination of the saber that did the Tigers in, as Harvard cruised to a 17-10 win.

“We tried to keep the energy up throughout the entire three meets, which was really important,” said junior captain and saber fencer Samantha Parker. “We kept it up and it helped everyone fence really well.”

—Staff writer Madeleine I. Shapiro can be reached at mshapiro@fas.harvard.