By Pete LaFleur (editor; CollegeFencing360.com)
(mixture of recap and historical perspective included below ... )
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. (3/22/09) – The Penn State fencing program capped a dream week on Sunday by wrapping up the NCAA Combined Men's and Women's Championship while adding two more individual titles (by foilist Doris Willette and epeeist Anastasia Ferdman) for its overflowing trophy case. This marks the 11th time that the Nittany Lions have claimed the NCAA combined team title, in the 20 years since the current format made its debut in 1990.
Penn State also has claimed NCAA combined team titles in 1990, '91, six straight from 1995-2000, '02 and '07. The Nittany Lions now have been the champions twice in the past three years, after a four-year "drought" of not winning the title from 2003-06. During the past 20 years, only five other teams have won the NCAA team title: three by Notre Dame ('94, '03, '05), two each for Columbia ('92, '93) and Ohio State ('04, '08), and one each for St. John's ('01) and Harvard ('06).
PSU staked itself to a five-point lead on Ohio State following Thursday's opening day of bouting and maintained that cushion on OSU when the men's competition concluded on Friday (ND was 14 points out of the lead at the end of each of the first two days). Penn State's incredible balance could be seen in the fact that its six men's entrants combined to win 98 bouts, while the women won 97.
ND surged past OSU into second place on Saturday (the first day of the women's bouting), but the home team still held a 16-point lead entering this morning's first round. The Irish briefly chipped away at the lead (while Ohio State faded firmly into third), with the final margin ultimately giving Penn State a 195-182 advantage over Notre Dame (OSU finished at 166).
PSU fencers won two of the men's events – foil (junior Nick Chinman) and sabre (freshman Aleksander Ochocki) – and then cheered on Willette and Ferdman to their victories, as Penn State became the first fencing program ever to win four NCAA individual titles in the same year. This nearly 70-year-old tournament featured only the three men's events from the early 1940s ubtil 1982, when women's foil debuted as an NCAA championship event (women's epee followed in '95, then women's sabre in 2000).
A quick glance through the record book reveals that it actually had been 10 years since one school had won even three NCAA individual titles – dating back to the 1999 Stanford team that was led by NCAA champs Felix Reichling (men's foil), Felicia Zimmerman (women's foil) and Monique DeBruin (women's epee). During the four-weapon era (1982-94), Columbia won all three men's weapons in 1988, in the form of foilist Marc Kent, epeeist Jon Normile and sabreist Bob Cottingham (ND's Molly Sullivan was the women's foil champ). The only teams to win all three men's weapons prior to 1982 were Navy in 1959 and NYU (in both '60 and '61).
Penn State's 195 wins at the 2009 NCAAs match the most in the six-weapon format, dating back to 1990 when women's sabre made its debut. Penn State's 2002 team also posted 195 victories, but there were 101 wins by the PSU men that year and 94 by the women (unlike the near-perfect gender-balanced point total from the '09 Nittany Lions).
In fact, a school has posted 90-plus wins in both its men's and women's bouts only four times under the current format: the aforementioned '02 and '09 PSU teams, Ohio State's 2004 championships squad (97 men's wins, 97 women's) and the St. John's runner-up team in 2002 (90 men's wins, 100 women's). That '02 tournament was a wild shootout – with PSU (195), SJU (190) and ND (186; 89 men/79 women) all topping the 185-win total.
For what it's worth, the most total men's wins in the six-weapon era (max. 138 bouts per team): 106 (SJU '01), 101 (PSU '02) and 98 (PSU '09). The most total women's wins since 1990: 105 (PSU '07), 103 (ND '05), 101 (OSU '08), 101 (PSU '00) and 100 (SJU '02). ... CF360 would love to go back and break down/compare the 2005 ND women (foilists Alicja Kryczalo and Andrea Ament; epeeists Amy Orlando and Kerry Walton; sabreists Mariel Zagunis and Valerie Providnza) and the 2007 PSU women's squad (foilists Willette and Tam Najm; epeeists Ferdman and Case Szarwark; sabreists Caity Thompson and Sophie Hiss). One interesting note is that all six of the above ND fencers – and four of the six from PSU (all but Najm and Szarwark) – were/have been an NCAA finalist at least once in their college careers.
Notre Dame's win total this week (183) would have been enough to win the NCAA title in 2000, '01, '03, '05 and '06 (Ohio State won in '08 with a similar win total, at 185). Penn State outscored Notre Dame this week in every weapon but women's epee, where the Irish turned in a 10-point advantage (38-28). The PSU men's 14-point margin on ND included a seven-win edge in sabre (37-30), plus four more wins than the Irish in foil (36-32) and three more in epee (25-22). The ND women actually won one more round-robin bout than PSU (98-97), despite being outscored by the Nittany Lions in sabre (33-27) and foil (36-33).
Willette claimed her second NCAA women's foil title on Sunday, also winning in '07 before not competing for PSU in '08 due to Olympic qualification. She survived an epic overtime bout (8-7) in the semifinals versus another former champion, Harvard fifth-year senior Emily Cross (who, like Willette, won as a freshman in '05). ND sophomore Hayley Reese held early leads in the foil title bout (2-0, 3-2 and 4-3) – but Willette flashed her championship "metal" and rattled off 12 of the final 13 points for the 15-5 victory.
Ferdman also beat an ND fencer (freshman Courtney Hurley) in the medal-round, again in stunning fashion. Hurley was on the verge of advancing to the final bout, with a 13-8 semifinal lead, before Ferdman got on a roll and scored seven straight touches for the 15-13 win. She faced another freshman – fellow Israeli Noam Mills (Harvard) – in the title bout and steadily built a lead before winning, 15-9, for her third All-America finish in as many seasons (4th in '07, 6th in '08).
Yet one more freshman, Duke's Becca Ward – who joined Cross, Willette and Mills as 2008 Olympians – competed in the medal round, capping her strong debut season in college fencing by winning the women's sabre competition. Ward followed up a 22-1 record in the round-robin by defeating Columbia junior Daria Schneider ('07 NCAA champ) in a 15-9 semifinal. She then finished her season by beating another freshman, Harvard's Caroline Vloka, in a 15-4 championship bout.
Harvard's women have been impressive all season, especially with their depth in foil and epee (plus Vloka's strong debut in sabre). It would have been great to see a three-fencer battle between the top teams, with each represented by one fencer in the three weapons. Top odds probably would have been given to the Harvard trio of Cross-Mills-Vloka, with similar consideration going to PSU's Willette-Ferdman-Monica Aksamit (a freshman who missed the sabre medal round based on total-point indicators).