Note: in a continuing effort to bring more consistency to the reporting and coverage of college fencing, it should be noted that the correct (and elongated) name to used for the March 19-22 tournament is "2009 NCAA Men's and Women's Fencing Championships" (the words "National Collegiate" sometimes can be replaced with "NCAA"). The team title is best referenced as "NCAA Combined Men's and Women's Fencing Championship." The word "finals" should not be used when referring to the NCAA Championships, much as the word "qualifier" is not necessary when referencing the NCAA Regional events (instead, these events simply are "NCAA West Regional," etc.).
The CF360 blog noted on Sunday that any proclamations about fencers being "automatically" qualified for the NCAAs were premature – because, in fact, fencers had only been nominated by regional committees for consideration in the NCAA field. Adding further confusion and more inconsistency was the fact that these nominations are not meant to be public knowledge (and never were formally announced).
Anyway, it was best to wait and see what the NCAA released ... and it proved to be a longer wait than expected – but this is what we now know:
• The committee awarded 25 NCAA entrant spots in women's foil, contrary to the 24 spots that usually are allocated for each weapon (more on this rarity later – why it happened, what it means, and how it might impact the NCAA team standings).
• Columbia ended up with 11 NCAA entrants, after seeing that projected number fluctuate from the maximum 12 to as low as eight (not including potential at-large selections). It was being reported on Sunday that sabreist Trevis Joyner had rallied to claim one of the Northeast Region's eight NCAA allocation spots in that weapon – but such automatic status seemed to be a bit of a leap, as Joyner was seeded fairly low (23rd) and did not finish inside the top-10 (11th). Defending NCAA champion Jeff Spear was locked in as Columbia's #1 men's sabre entrant, and fellow veteran Alex Rudnicki – like Joyner – appeared to be close to qualifying (he matched his seed by placing 12th, one spot behind Joyner).
When the Championship bids were revealed today, Spear was the only men's sabreist among Columbia's NCAA entrants, as were eight other Lions fencers who had fairly solid qualification criteria. The bad news in men's sabre was countered by two Columbia "bubble" fencers receiving bids (likely via the at-large process): junior All-America women's epeeist Tess Finkel (#3 seed at Regional/placed 19th) and sophomore All-America women's foilist Abby Caparros-Janto (#4 seed/placed 16th). .... Thus, Columbia ended up with 11 NCAA entrants, with Finkel and Caparros-Janto certainly being capable of adding plenty of round-robin wins to the team's point total.
(More coming in a later blog post about recent 11-bid teams that have tried to win the NCAA title; we also will have a breakdown of various teams' yearly number of NCAA bids, dating back to the 2000 season when women's sabre made its debut as the sixth weapon event at the NCAAs).
• Penn appears to have received one of the at-large bids, with freshman foilist Zane Grodman joining his classmate Vidur Kapur in the field. Grodman benefitted from his initial #5 regional seed (reflecting his strong regular-season bouting), helping to offset his #12 finish at the Mid-Atlantic/South Regional. The Quakers ended up with nine total bids to the NCAA Championships, tying Ivy League rival Harvard for the sixth-most of any team in the field.
• Princeton seemingly had seven bids locked up and that number bumped to eight, as men's sabreist John Stogin earned a return trip to the NCAAs (again, as a probable at-large selection).
• Stanford also moved up to eight entrants (from a projected six), with the addition of two men's fencers (probable at-large) to their NCAA contingent: epee All-American Clayton Kenney and sabreist Max Murphy.
• Kudos go out to NYU and Yale, for each totaling seven entrants. CF360 will break down these teams later – but, for now, it's impressive to see them so close to the entrant totals for teams like Penn, Harvard, Princeton and Stanford.
• With eight of the nation's 42 varsity fencing programs sponsoring only a women's team on the varsity level, we wanted to take a quick look at the programs (from among all 42) that qualified four or more women's fencers:
6 – Columbia, Notre Dame, Ohio State and Penn State
5 – Harvard, *Northwestern, St. John's and *Temple
4 – *Cornell, NYU, Penn and Princeton
* – Schools preceded by an asterisk sponsor varsity women's fencing, but not varsity men's fencing.
... So, Northwestern and Temple each have more women's entrants than either Penn or Princeton (and they matched the women's entrants for Harvard and St. John's) .... It also was nice to see a qualifier from another school (Fairleigh Dickinson) that sponsors varsity fencing only on the women's side: FDU foilist Alyssa Lomuscio, who entered the Mid-Atlantic/South Regional as the #17 seed but went on to place fourth.