COLLEGE FENCING 360.com
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History in the Making
Part I.: Three-Time NCAA Champs
** UPDATED AFTER 2015 NCAAs **
By: Pete LaFleur (editor@collegefencing360.com) March 23, 2015
It was history in the making on Sunday, March 22, 2015 – at Ohio State's Saint John Arena, in Columbus. Notre Dame junior Lee Kiefer (Versailles) won her third straight NCAA women’s foil title, edging Columbia’s Margaret Lu (her fellow U.S. National Teamer) in a 15–13 thriller. In the process, Kiefer became only the 15th college fencer – spanning all six weapons – to win three of more NCAA individual titles. In her final season (presumably 2017, after taking another crack at Olympic glory), Kiefer would have the chance to become join Michael Lofton (NYU men's sabre; 1984-87) and Penn State women’s foilist Olga Kalinovskaya (1993-96) as college fencing’s only four-time NCAA champions.
Kiefer had finished atop the 2015 NCAA round-robin standings (21–2; +69 total-points indicator) before winning a 15–7 semifinal vs. Marta Hausman of St. John’s. One year earlier, Kiefer also had finished atop the round-robin (19–4; +57), followed by medal-round wins over Ohio State’s Alanna Goldie (15–11 semifinal) and ND teammate Madi Zeiss (13–10) to win the 2014 title. And as a freshman in 2013, Kiefer topped the round-robin (22–1; +74), beat Ohio State’s Mona Shaito in a 15–5 semifinal and then bested Columbia’s Jackie Dubrovich in the 15–8 title bout.
Spanning her three years of dominance at the NCAA Championships, Kiefer now has racked up a 62–7 record (a 90% win rate) in her NCAA round-robin bouts (68–7/.907 when including the medal round), with an even +200 in total-point indicators during the 69 NCAA round-robin bouts (avg. bout margin of +2.9).
SISTER ACT – A Kiefer sister actually has climbed to the top podium block in four of the past five NCAA Fencing Championsips, as Harvard’s Alex Kiefer was the 2011 NCAA women’s foil champion, after topping Ivy League rival Eve Levin of Princeton in the title bout. The only “non-Kiefer” women’s foil title over the past five seasons came in 2012, when Evgeniya Kirpicheva of St. John’s claimed the top honor. … As for Alex and Lee’s younger brother Axl? He has signed on to become part of the Notre Dame fencing program starting in the fall of 2015, ultimately joining his sister as part of the tremdnous ND foil tradition.
… Six years prior to Lee Kiefer’s “three-peat," two of the fencers who were in action at the 2009 NCAAs – Ohio State senior men's foilist Andras Horanyi (Boulder, Colo.) and Wayne State junior men's epeeist Slava Zingerman (Ashkelon, Israel) – already owned two NCAA individual titles. Both fencers had the chance – by winning another title – to join that exclusive group of fencers who have totaled three-plus NCAA titles.
Horanyi suffered a series of early 5-4 losses at the '09 NCAAs and failed to reach the four-fencer medal round, ultimately placing 7th for second team All-America honors. Zingerman was second after the men's epee round-robin (17-6) and went on to win his third straight title, following a 15-11 semifinal vs. Harvard's Benji Ungar (the '06 NCAA champ) and a 15-7 title bout vs. Princeton's Graham Wicas.
The elite list of fencers with 3-plus NCAA titles also now includes former Duke standout Becca Ward, who won the NCAA women's sabre title in 2009, was runner-up in '10 (lost final to Harvard’s Caroline Vloka) and won the title again in both 2011 and '12. St. John's men's sabre veteran Daryl Homer came up short in his bid for a third NCAA title, losing 15-14 in the 2013 semifinals vs. Penn State freshman Shaul Gordon.
In 2010, Zingerman had the chance to become an extremely rare four-time NCAA champion (something achieved only twice previously, by one men's fencer and one woman/see list below), but he was unable to deliver the historic feat. As of 2015, it has been 19 years since any fencer "four-peated" and no men's fencer has turned in that feat since the late 1980s. Lee Kiefer will have the chance at her historic four-peat presumably in 2017 (after a year off from college fencing to compete in the 2016 Olympics)
Interestingly enough, the 15 fencers with three or more NCAA titles have included more from Wayne State (4) than any other school, plus two each from NYU, Penn State, Ohio State and Notre Dame (also one each from Columbia, Stanford and Duke). The 15 "three-peat/four-peat" champions now include 10 men (four foilists, four sabreists, two epeeists) and five women (three foilists, one epeeist and one in sabre). Of the three total epeeists to be three/four-time champs, two of them have come from Wayne State.
Of the fencers listed below, only six – Michael Lofton, Olga Kalinovskaya, Alicja Kryczalo, Boaz Ellis, Slava Zingerman and Kiefer – won NCAA titles during their respective freshman, sophomore and junior seasons. Kryczalo and Kiefer, both foilists, are the only fencers among these six from the same school. (Note that freshmen were not eligible during Bruce Soriano's early-1970s career, and the second fencer on this list of 15 – Risto Hurme – spent his first year of college at the Univ. of Helsinki in his native Finland).
FENCERS WHO HAVE WON THREE OR FOUR NCAA INDIVIDUAL TITLES
all research on this page courtsey of CollegeFencing360.com (please credit & link accordingly)
Bruce Soriano (3) ... men's sabre ... Columbia (1970-72)
Risto Hurme (3) ... men's epee ... NYU (1973-75)
Greg Benko (3) ... men's foil ... Wayne State (1974-76)
Ernest Simon (3) ... men's foil ... Wayne State (1978, '80-'81) ... Melbourne, Australia
Michael Lofton (4) ... men's sabre ... NYU (1984-87)
Olga Kalinovskaya (4) ... women's foil ... Penn State (1993-96) ... St. Petersburg, Russia
Nick Bravin (3) ... men's foil ... Stanford (1990, '92-'93) ... Los Angeles, Calif.
Thomas Strzalkowski (3) ... men's sabre ... Penn State (1992-94)
Alicja Kryczalo (3) ... women's foil ... Notre Dame (2002-04) ... Gdansk, Poland
Boaz Ellis (3) ... men's foil ... Ohio State (2004-06) ... Tzippori, Israel
Adam Crompton (3) ... men's sabre ... Ohio State (2003-04, '06) ... Newark, N.J.
Anna Garina (3) ... women's epee ... Wayne State (2004-05, '07) ... Kiev, Ukraine
Slava Zingerman (3) ... men's epee ... Wayne State (2006-08) ... Ashkelon, Israel
Becca Ward (3) … women's sabre … Duke (2009, '11-12) … Portland, Ore.
Lee Kiefer (3) … women’s foil … Notre Dame (2013–15) … Versailles, KY
(note: Kiefer has one year of eligibility remaining, likely in 2017, after 2016 Olympics)
… Former NYU men's sabreist Michael Lofton (1984-87) and Penn State women's foilist Olga Kalinovskaya (1993-96) are the only fencers ever to win four NCAA individual titles. The three other men's sabre fencers who have been three-time champs include Columbia's Bruce Soriano ('70-'72), PSU's Thomas Strzalkowski ('92-'94) and Ohio State’s Adam Crompton ('03, '04, '06).
The four men's foilists who have been three-time NCAA champions include: Wayne State's Greg Benko ('74-'76) and Ernest Simon ('78, '80, '81), Stanford's Nick Bravin ('90, '92-'93) and OSU’s Boaz Ellis ('04-'06), who beat his teammate Horanyi in the 2006 NCAA final.
Notre Dame women's foilist Alicja Kryczalo won the NCAA title from 2002-04, before losing the 2005 NCAA final to Harvard's Emily Cross (who went on to fence for Team USA at the 2008 Olympics). Kryczalo’s legendary two-day performance as a freshman at the 2002 NCAAs included winning all 23 of her round-robin bouts, with an eye-popping +100 won-loss total-points indicator (she allowed only 15 total touches in those 23 bouts).
Epee typically is the most unpredictable of the three weapons, and accordingly the feat of pulling off an NCAA title "three-peat" has been accomplished by only two men's epeeists – inititally 40 years ago, by NYU's Risto Hurme from '73-’75, and most recently WSU’s Zingerman from ’06-’08) – and one women's epeeist: Wayne State epeeist Anna Garina (in '04, '05 and '07).
All told, 10 of the 15 fencers on the above list have won their three titles in consecutive seasons (but, again, only see have done so as freshmen, sophomores and juniors).
During the first decade of the 21st century (2000-09), only two fencers – Kryczalo and Garina – reached the NCAA final in their weapon during all four years of their college eligibility. Garina lost the 2006 NCAA women's epee final to PSU's Katarzyna Trzopek, who also was NCAA champion in 2003.
Zingerman became the first men's epeeist in 34 years to be a three-time national champion.
NCAA individual championships have been awarded every year since 1941 (aside from the 1943-46 World War II. era), in each of the three weapons. Women's foil was introduced as an NCAA individual weapon in 1982, women's epee in 1995 and women's sabre in 2000. Two-time Olympian Sada Jacobson was the first fencer to win multiple NCAA women's sabre titles (at Yale, in 2000 and 01), in the brief history of that weapon. The 21 years of NCAA women's epee bouting now have yielded only three multi-year champions: Trzopek, Garina and Notre Dame’s Courtney Hurley (’11 and ’13; her sister Kelley Hurley was the 2008 NCAA women’s epee champion, also with ND).
In addition to the various fencers mentioned above, there have been several other two-time NCAA champions during the 21st century: Stanford men's foilist Felix Reichling ('99, '00), PSU men's foilist Non Panchan ('02, '03), St. John's men's epee standout Arpad Horvath ('02, '04), SJU men's sabre legend Ivan Lee ('01, '02), Penn State women's foilist Doris Willette ('07, '09), yet another St. John's men's epeeist, Marat Israelian ('11-12), Penn State men's sabre fencer Aleks Ochocki ('09, ’ 2), Notre Dame men’s foilist Gerek Meinhardt (’10 & ‘14), and Stanford men’s foilist Alex Massialas (’13 & ’15; likely will fence final college season in ‘17) ... for a total of 20 multi-year champions since 2000 (also Sada Jacobson, Kryczalo, Garina, Ellis, Crompton, Trzopek, Zingerman, Homer, Ward, Courtney Hurley and Lee Kiefer).
There has been at least one multi-year champion achieved in 13 of the past 14 NCAA Championships, from 2002–15 (all but 2010): Lee and Jacobson in 2002; Panchan and Kryczalo in '03; Horvath, Crompton and Kryczalo in '04; Ellis and Garina in '05; Ellis, Crompton and Trzopek in '06; Garina in '07; Horanyi and Zingerman in '08; Zingerman in '09; Homer and Israelian in '11; Ward in ’12; Hurley in ’13; Kiefer and Meinhardt in ’14; and Kiefer in ’15. The 2010 NCAA champions included Meinhardt, Israelian, Homer, Nicole Ross (w-foil; Columbia), Marg Guzzi (w-epee; Penn State) and Caroline Vloka (w-sabre; Harvard). Israelian and Homer went on the next year (2011) to win their second titles, while Ross prevented Willette from winning her third title and Vloka denied Ward a repeat championship.
Ellis and Crompton are the only teammates ever to win their respective third (or fourth) NCAA title in the same year.
One other factoid: had Horanyi won the 2009 NCAA title, that would have marked the sixth straight NCAA men's foil championship claimed by an Ohio State fencer. Such a streak is unprecedented, in any weapon. There has been only one other time that a school has won the same weapon five straight years, when Penn State's "Olga connection" of Olga Chernyak ('92) and Kalinovskaya ('93-'96) brought home the NCAA women's foil titles every year from 1992-96.
Penn State men’s sabre has produced three different NCAA men’s sabre champions over the four-year span from 2012–15: Ochocki in ’12, Kaito Streets ’14 and freshman Andrew Mackiewicz in ’15.
all research on this page courtsey of CollegeFencing360.com (please credit & link accordingly)