BELFAST – Two elite men's foilists who competed in the 2009 NCAA medal round – Notre Dame's Gerek Meinhardt and Penn State's Miles Chamley-Watson – turned in top-10 finishes on Friday at the Junior World Championships. Meinhardt (the '09 NCAA runner-up) overcame a slow start to reach the semifinals, while Chamley-Watson lost in the round-of-16 and finished 10th among the huge 116-fencer field.
MEINHARDT – who competed in the 2008 Olympics and entered the week ranked 14th among the world's men's foilists (for all age groups) – managed only a 3-2 record /+6 in his pool-13 bouts, with a shutout victory over South Africa's Skye Pym-Siljeur and 5-1 wins over China's Min Chen (the eventual 27th-place finisher) and Bolivia's Diego Maldonado (86th). The San Francisco native lost a 1-5 bout against Italy's Alessio Focani, who was ranked 15th among the world's u-20 men's foilists and went on to join Meinhardt among the semifinalists (Meinhardt's other pool loss came vs. Latvia's Davids Gasilovskis, 2-5).
During the direct-elimination phase, Meinhardt turned in comfortable wins against New Zealand's Chris Bell (15-6) and the Netherlands' Mats Stijlaart (15-5), followed by a round-of-32 victory over China's Chen Li (15-11). France's Jean-Paul Tony Helissey (ranked 7th among the world's u-20 men's foilists) awaited in the next round, with Meinhardt claiming the 15-11 win before topping another world-ranked French fencer (#20 Paul Fausser) in a 15-9 quarterfinal.
Meinhardt's day ended in a 13-15 semifinal versus Great Britain's Edward Jeffries, who lost the title bout against Italy's Tommaso Lari (the world's #2 u-20 men's foilist).
CHAMLEY-WATSON – who entered the week 9th in the world U-20 men's foilist rankings (now 6th) – won all six of his bouts in pool-8, dropping only eight touches (+22) in the pool phase. The Philadelphia native posted an early 5-1 win over South Korea's Seung Woong Lee (the eventual 8th-place finisher), while also topping Great Britain's Rhys Melia and Croatia's Ivan Kosmic by the same score. He added a shutout victory over Brazil's Maxime Souza, beat Japan's Ryo Miyake (the 28th-place finisher) in a 5-2 bout and defeated India's Gaurav Kumar Gupta in his closest bout during the pool round (5-3).
After opening the DE with a 15-7 win over Kuwait's Abdullateef Alhumaiden, Chamley-Watson went on to top Serguei Byk of Belarus (15-9), before suffering a narrow loss to Great Britain's Jeffries (12-15) in the round-of-16.