The #4-ranked Columbia fencing teams – both in quest of their third straight Ivy League title – opened with victories on Sunday, as the host school for the Ivy League Round-Robin Championships (part-1). The men defeated Yale 17-10 while the women registered a comfortable 21-6 win over the Bulldogs.
Columbia's men won seven sabre bouts, plus five each in foil and epee. Defending NCAA sabre champion Jeff Spear won all three of his bouts, as did fellow sabreist Alex Rudnicki and foil All-American Kurt Getz. Foilist Sherif Farrag added a 2-1 record, along with All-American Max Czapanskiy and fellow NCAA epee participant Lorenzo Casertano.
Yale epee All-American Michael Pearce (3-0) and foil veteran John Gurrieri (2-1) were the only Bullddogs men's fencers to win multiple bouts against the Lions.
Sunday's opening match featured the top-three finishers in the 2008 Ivy men's epee standings: Czapansliy (13-2), Pearce (10-2) and Casertano (11-4). Getz (12-3) and Gurrieri (11-4) finished atop the men's foil standings in the '08 Ivy championships.
Columbia two-time All-America epeeist Dwight Smith – who reached the 2007 NCAA semifinals but did not fence for the Lions in 2008 (due to his Olympic qualifying bid ) – won only one of his three bouts vs. Yale, losing to the three-time NCAA participant Pearce and one of his teammates.
The Columbia women nearly swept the epee bouts against Yale (8-1), adding seven wns in sabre and six in foil. Freshman sabreist Sammy Roberts joined foilist Alex Huber and two epeeists (fellow newcomer Neely Brandfield-Harvey and Martyna Urbanowicz) in posting 3-0 records versus the Bulldogs. Four other Columbia fencers went 2-1, as did Yale sabreist Jennifer Ivers and foilist Katharine Pitt.
Columbia standout Daria Schneider – the 2007 NCAA champion and a 2008 Olympic hopeful – did not fence versus Yale (we will attempt to determine her status later in the day). All-America foilist Nicole Ross managed to win only once vs. Yale (losing to Pitt and another Bulldogs fencer) while teammate Abby Caparros-Janto went 2-1 in the Sunday-morning opener (Ross and Caparros-Janto were the 1-2 Ivy League finishers in the 2008 women's foil standings.
As in the men's match, Sunday's Columbia-Yale pairing featured several of the top women's epee finishers at the 2008 Ivy League Round-Robins: Urbanowicz (16-2; top finisher), Isaacson (12-6) and Yale's Rebecca Moss (12-3), who lost on Sunday to both of her Columbia rivals.