• Yale took home the historic Little Iron Man Trophy, which has been presented since the 1890s to the IFA men's foil team champion. The Bulldogs fencers combined to go 24-5 in their flight bouts, edging Penn (23) by one point while Harvard (21) and Columbia (20) also reached 20 wins. ... Columbia may have made a run at the Little Iron Man, if not for the absence of All-American Kurt Getz. Princeton (14-15) likewise could have been more competitive, but the Tigers were fencing without freshman Alex Mills (the '09 Ivy League champion) and veteran Clayton Flanders. ... Yale also shared the 2008 IFA men's foil title, with Columbia.
• All three Yale fencers – John Gurrieri (8-2), Shiv Kachru (7-3) and Nathaniel Botwinick (9-0) – had strong efforts in the flight phase, as did Penn's super-freshman trio of Alex Simmons (7-3), Vidur Kapur (8-2) and Zane Grodman (8-1) ... each of the Yale fencers actually lost in the direct-elimination round-of-16, while the Penn foilists all won their first DE bouts ... Simmons (#3 seed in the DE) and Kapur (#10) went on to meet in the semiifinals, with Simmons winning that bout (15-12) and then edging top-seeded Sherif Farrag in the title bout (15-14) ... Penn now has produced four of the past five IFA men's foil individual champions.
• Half of the foilists who advanced out of flight-A (a.k.a. the top-8 seeds in the DE) lost their round-of-16 bouts ... Penn's Grodman (#15 seed) – who was +29 while winning all but one of his flight-C bouts – knocked off the #2 seed, Yale's Gurrieri, in a 15-10 bout ... Columbia's Isaac Kim barely made the DE (he was 5-5/+3 in flight-B), but the #13 seed went on to defeat the #4 seed, Will Friedman (Brandeis), for another round-of-16 upset (15-12) ... Harvard's Hao Meng (#11 seed; 8-2/+18 in flight-B did the same, in a 15-6 win over Vassar's Jesse Bisignano (#6) ... Penn's Kapur (#10; +19 in flight-B) completed the round-of-16 upsets (based on seeding), with a 15-11 win over NYU's Alex Kao (#7).
• In contrast to the round-of-16 bouts, there were no upsets (again, based on seeding) in the final seven men's foil matchups ... there was one quarterfinal with double-digit seeds, as #10 Kapur defeated his Penn teammate (#15 Grodman) in a 15-11 bout ... Simmons beat Meng in the quarters (15-5), followed by the semifinal victory over fellow Penn foilist Kapur and the final against Farrag (who had defeated Princeton's Marcus Howard, the #5 seed, in a 15-11 semifinal).
• Harvard veteran Kai Itameri-Kinter – who earned 2006 All-America honors as a member of the Crimson's NCAA team champion – finished second in the 2009 IFA flight-A standings (8-2, +21), but he did not compete in the DE ... Getz's absence allowed Columbia junior Asher Grodman (older brother to Penn's Zane Grodman) to compete in the IFAs (he went 6-3/+13 in flight-C before losing to Farrag in the DE, 12-15).
IFA Men's Foil Round-of-16
(1) Sherif Farrag (COL) def. (16) Asher Grodman (COL) ... 15-12
(15) Zane Grodman (Penn) def. (2) John Gurrieri (Yale) ... 15-10
(3) Alex Simmons (Penn) def. (14) Nathaniel Botwinick (Yale) ... 15-13
(13) Isaac Kim (COL) def. (4) Will Friedman (BRAN) ... 15-12
(5) Marcus Howard (PRIN) def. (12) Shiv Kachru (Yale) ... 15-13
(11) Hao Meng (HARV) def. (6) Jesse Bisignano (VAS) ... 15-6
(10) Vidur Kapur (Penn) def. (7) Alex Kao (NYU) ... 15-11
(8) Benjamin Nield (MIT) def. (9) Jonathan Moch (PRIN) ... 15-11
Quarterfinals
(1) Sherif Farrag (COL) def. (8) Benjamin Nield (MIT) ... 15-7
Semifinals
(1) Sherif Farrag (COL) def. (5) Marcus Howard (PRIN) ... 15-11
Final
(3) Alex Simmons (Penn) def. (1) Sherif Farrag (COL) ... 15-14
1. Alex Simmons (Penn) ... #3 DE seed ... 7-3 in flight-A (+12)
2. Sherif Farrag (COL) ... #1 DE seed ... 9-1 in flight-A (+22)
3. Marcus Howard (PRIN) ... #5 DE seed ... 4-6 in flight-A (-1)
3. Vidur Kapur (Penn) ... #10 DE seed ... 8-2 in flight-B (+19)
5. Benjamin Nield (MIT) ... #8 DE seed ... 2-8 in flight-A (-11)
6. Hao Meng (HARV) ... #11 DE seed ... 8-2 in flight-B (+18)
7. Isaac Kim (COL) ... #13 DE seed ... 5-5 in flight-B (+3)
8. Zane Grodman (Penn) ... #15 DE seed ... 8-1 in flight-C (+29)
9. John Gurrieri (Yale) ... #2 DE seed ... 8-2 in flight-A (+15)
10. Will Friedman (BRAN) ... #4 DE seed ... 5-5 in flight-A (E)
11. Jesse Bisignano (VAS) ... #6 DE seed ... 4-6 in flight-A (-11)
12. Alex Kao (NYU) ... #7 DE seed ... 4-6 in flight-A (-13)
13. Jonathan Moch (PRIN) ... #9 DE seed ... 8-2 in flight-B (+21)
14. Shiv Kachru (Yale) ... #12 DE seed ... 7-3 in flight-B (+13)
15. Nathaniel Botwinick (Yale) ... #14 DE seed ... 9-0 in flight-C (+29)
16. Asher Grodman (COL) ... #16 DE seed ... 6-3 in flight-C (+13)
2009 IFA Men's Foil Final Team Standings
1. Yale 24-5 (+57) ... John Gurrieri 8-2, Shiv Kachru 7-3, Nathaniel Botwinick 9-0
2. Pennsylvania 23-6 (+60) ... Alex Simmons 7-3, Vidur Kapur 8-2, Zane Grodman 8-1
3. Harvard 21-8 (+41) ... Kai-Itameri-Kinter 8-2, Hao Meng 8-2, Long Ouyang 5-4
4. Columbia 20-9 (+38) ... Sherif Farrag 9-1, Isaac Kim 5-5, Asher Grodman 6-3
5. Princeton 14-15 (+3) ... Marcus Howard 4-6, Jonathan Moch 8-2, Anton Fleissner 1-2, Brendan Heath 1-5
6. Brandeis 13-16 (-14) ... Will Friedman 5-5, Jimmy Fruchterman 5-5, Dan Lanzara 3-6
7. MIT 11-18 (-14) ... Benjamin Nield 2-8, Daniel Levine 5-5, Richard LaGrandier 4-5
8. Boston College 9-20 (-41) ... Sjur Hoftun 2-8, Nick Kazimiroff 1-9, Connor Sumner 3-1, Andrew Shirman 3-2
9. Brown 7-13 (-12) ... Nick Bender 2-8, Scott Phillips 5-5
10. Vassar 7-22 (-68) ... Jesse Bisignano 4-6, Michael D'Urso 3-7, Neal McFarland 0-3, Robert Woodward 0-3
11. NYU 6-23 (-50) ... Alex Kao 4-6, John Master 0-5, Oung-Jo Yuh 0-5, Barrett Edward 2-7