fencing
Fencers Prepare for Upcoming NCAA Regional Championships
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“We’re all really motivated and it’s been a very positive team environment lately.”
The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/tag/fencing/page/2/)
“We’re all really motivated and it’s been a very positive team environment lately.”
“We obviously didn’t get as many wins as we wanted … but we came away knowing that we fought hard and fenced to the best of our abilities against some of the best fencers in the country.”
Fencing looks to reverse recent trend of placing outside the top four in Ivy’s since 2007-08. The Red has only placed within the top four twice in the past 32 years.
“It was also helpful to be fencing at home, the format of the tournament and all the cheering that was going on.”
The Cornell Fencing team heads to Waltham, Massachusetts this weekend to compete in the Brandeis Invitational. The meet will include matches with Brandeis, Boston College, MIT, UNC, and No. 5 St. John’s University. The team has not fenced a meet since the Vassar Invitational two weeks ago, where the Red was enormously successful and picked up seven of eight possible wins.
The Cornell fencing team had a successful Sunday in Poughkeepsie. The group fenced at the Vassar Invitational, winning seven of the eight matches it competed in. The Red defeated Fairleigh Dickinson, Haverford, CCNY, Sacred Heart, Vassar, Wellesley and Stevens, losing only to Northwestern. “I don’t think we even had a bout where a fencer didn’t win a single bout within one school,” said head coach Daria Schneider, “It was a really strong day for everybody even with [several] harder schools.”
In addition to the overall team performance, squad performances were almost uniformly dominant, with the foil squad going 54-18 and both the epee and saber squads going 53-19. The foil squad was undefeated in its squad matches for the day, being the only group to pull off a squad win against Northwestern.
The Cornell fencing team began its season this past weekend at the Penn Invitational in Philadelphia, PA, where it went up against Penn, Temple, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Columbia. The meet featured some of the country’s best fencing programs. The Columbia Lions won the NCAA Fencing Championship last season, Notre Dame finished second and Ohio State finished fifth. Although the Red lost every match and almost every squad match, the Epee squad managed to achieve wins against Penn and Notre Dame. “This weekend we fenced some of the best schools in the country,” said first-year head coach Daria Schneider. “The pressure was mainly on our opponents in the sense that they really were expected to win.”
Given how challenging the opposition was, Schneider says she is proud of the team’s results.
“I don’t feel like I have a job, even though I work all the time, but I just really love it,” Schneider said. “Early in the morning it’s the first thing I’m thinking about and late at night I’m thinking about things I want to do with the team. I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”
This past Sunday, the Cornell women’s fencing team (16-8) travelled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to compete in their last competition of the dual meet season. The Red fought hard against five foes over the course of the day, defeating UNC (16-11), NJIT (20-7) and Johns Hopkins (21-6) but dropping matches to Duke (14-13) and Temple (15-12). The results of the invitational were reflective of a Red fencing program that has developed admirably over the course of the season on their way to a 16-8 record. “It is great to know the team is growing with more experience gained and [the] results reflect everyone’s overall effort this season,” said head coach Iryna Dolgikh. “The highlights were brought to us by the solid performances from our team MVP fencers on the foil squad – Angelica [Gangemi] and Ediona [Sera],” Dolgikh said.
Senior Angelica Gangemi over a foot injury to place fourth in foil in the Ivy League Championships, held over the weekend in Barton Hall. Cornell placed fifth as team, defeating Brown and Yale.