Here's a look back at some of the women's team and individual highlights from the M.I.T. Invitational (Feb. 1), with men's highlights still to come:
• Due to an incorrectly totalled scoresheet, the CF360 blog misreported over the weekend that the NYU women had upset #10 Duke. Instead, Duke won the epee competition vs. NYU, 7-2, and thus the Blue Devils were the 16-11 winner. However, M.I.T. did score a 15-12 upset over Duke, behind a balanced effort with six foil wins, five in epee and four in sabre. M.I.T. epeeist Stephanie Shin and foilist Lindley Graham each went 3-0 in the win over the Blue Devils.
• In the only women's matchup between top-10 teams (#5 Harvard over #9 Duke, 18-9), Olympic bronze medalist Becca Ward swept her Harvard opponents. Five of the Harvard women's fencers have competed in previous NCAA Championships (none from Duke), and most of the Crimson veterans defeated their Blue Devil counterparts, although Duke's Dana Rosen did score a 5-2 win over two-time NCAA foil participant Arielle Pensler
• Duke's freshman phenom Ward won all 14 of her bouts at M.I.T. and now is 46-2 for the season, with her only losses coming two weekends ago at the Princeton Invitational (3-5 vs. Penn State's Caity Thompson and 2-5 vs. Penn's Danielle Kamis). Thompson, a two-time NCAA semifinalist, and Ward have been teammates on various U.S. national teams (both also train at the Oregon Fencing Alliance) while the All-American Kamis placed 10th at the '08 NCAAs.
• Penn senior foilist Ilana Sinkin – a 2008 All-American (9th at NCAAs) and a three-time NCAA participant – dropped a 5-4 bout to M.I.T.'s Cordelia Link (a 2007 NCAA entrant) ... NYU's Sophie Ciarvino (a '07 NCAA fencer) also scored the upset win over Sinkin (5-1), but Ciarvino lost to the other Penn foilists (2-5 vs. Laura Paragano, 1-5 vs. Mia Howell). Several other fencers registered wins over Ciarvino, among them Duke's Alexandra Stein (5-4), the M.I.T. duo of Link (5-3) and Graham (5-2), and Alexandra Dalrymple of Brandeis (3-2) ... the Princeton foilists turned in a sweep of Link, with 5-1 wins by Rocky Rothenberg and Lucille Jarry (plus a 5-3 victory for Karen Petsch).
• Haverford women's epeeist Emma Buckingham posted a 5-4 win over M.I.T.'s Shin but lost a 5-3 bout to Brandeis standout Caitlin Kozel, in noteworthy matchups between 2008 NCAA participants. Harvard's Lisa Vastola scored a 5-4 win over Buckingham, who also dropped two bouts against Princeton (1-5 vs. Lauren Cashon and 0-5 vs. Clark) ... Kozel suffered a mild upset vs. Duke's Nicole Bloom (3-5) while Shin lost to NYU's Eliza Friar (4-5) and was swept by Princeton (2-5 vs. Stephanie Wheeler, 1-5 vs. both Kristen Hughes and Kathryn Anthony), in addition to dropping a 4-5 bout to NYU's May Zhan.
• NYU sabreist Alyxandra Mattison (a 2008 NCAA entrant) turned in a 5-1 win over Penn's Kamis, but two-time NCAA participant Alexis Baran (5-1) and her Penn teammate Dominique Franciskowitz (5-2) both defeated Mattison (NYU's Lisa Verzino added a 5-1 win over Baran) ... M.I.T.'s Robin Shin turned in some noteworthy sabre wins, most notably versus Penn's Baran (5-3) and NYU's Mattison (5-1), who also dropped a 2-5 bout to Anna Hanley of Brandeis.
• Led by Olympic foilist Emily Cross (the '05 NCAA champion), the Harvard women now are 14-1 – with their only loss coming to #1 Penn State (10-17).