It's been a long road to Ivy League competition for the fencing teams, a road that finally ended Sunday when the team competed in its first-ever Ivy League Championship. Both the men and women showed that they would not be pushovers, with the women picking up an upset victory over Princeton.
Fittingly, the Bears had to travel a long road to get there, trekking more than nine hours up to Ithaca, N.Y. - after picking up Assistant Coach Gerry King in Connecticut - for the first of two Ivy competitions. Each team competed against Columbia and Princeton, and the women also squared off against Cornell, which only fields a women's team.
The highlight of the meet was the women's squad's 14-13 win over Princeton. The sabre squad led the way, winning 7-2 behind three victories each from Charlotte Gartenberg '08 and Olivia Partyka '06. The deciding match was won by All-American epeeist Ruth Schneider '06, which pushed the team score to 13-12.
"I think it's safe to say that nobody really expected us to beat Princeton," Schneider said. "It was a great victory. There were a lot of crucial bouts and every squad stepped up."
The women's team nearly finished the day with a winning record, narrowly losing to Cornell 15-12 in its final match after a momentum-killing two-hour break. Brown came out of the break poorly, and the fencers were not mentally ready to resume competition, Schneider said.
All three squad matches against the Big Red were decided 6-3, with the foilists as Brown's lone victor. Jen Hausmann '07 (3-0) and Herald Design Editor Allison Kwong '08 (2-1) led the team in that weapon, while tri-captain Schneider and sabreist Deborah Gorth '09 also turned in 2-1 performances.
As usual, Schneider was in top form throughout the day, leading all Brown fencers with a 7-2 record, including three wins in a 22-5 loss to Columbia. Gartenberg was the only other Brown fencer to post a winning record, ending with a 5-3 mark.
"(Ruth is) a senior leader on the team," said Head Coach Atilio Tass. "Now she's understanding the game at a greater level. It's all coming together for her in the times we most need it."
The men did not fare quite as well but did come out of the day with a positive outlook heading into this weekend's half of the Ivy Championship.
"We had a bad day, but the good side of that is that we didn't get killed on a good day," said tri-captain and epeeist John Sheehy '07. "We know we can improve."
After falling hard to Columbia, 26-1, the men stepped up a bit against Princeton. The Bears lost 18-9, but the sabre squad of Sam Levine '08 (3-0), tri-captain Jeremy Adler '06 (2-1), Dan Mahoney '07 (1-1) and Mike Groth '09 (1-0) pulled out a 7-2 win. Levine led the men, pulling out a 3-3 record.
Despite being disappointed with the day's final results, the team did take note that Columbia, which has won 32 Ivy League titles since the inaugural 1955-56 season, including the last five, was far from the worst team it could have lost to.
"We had never seen an Ivy League competition program. We were looking at all the Ivy League champions and Columbia had won about 60 percent of the time," Sheehy said.
Next week, both teams will compete in a schedule that is "similar ... if not identical" to this past weekend's, Tass said. The Bears will lead off with Harvard and Penn, have a long break, then face Yale. In a match earlier this season, the men's team defeated the Bulldogs and the women narrowly lost, though they competed without Hausmann and foilist Nanette Milner '06.
