The Bears posted another set of impressive scores in the second half of the Northeast Fencing Conference tournament last Saturday. The men's team was victorious, and the women's team posted a pair of one-bout losses to Vassar College and Brandeis University.
The men's squads, in their combined scores, won 21-6 against Dartmouth, 19-8 against MIT, 18-9 against Tufts and 16-11 against Vassar. The Bears also defeated one of their rivals, Brandeis, 15-12, which Joshua Grill '14 called "a big deal." The women's squads were also victorious, beating Dartmouth 22-5, Smith College and Tufts 18-9, and MIT 16-11.
Head Coach Atilio Tass said his fencers "came back very enthusiastic" from winter break and that he was "very, very happy with this weekend's results."
The fencers put up impressive individual scores in all of the weapons. In men's sabre, Teddy Weller '13 went 14-1 and Peter Tyson '13 went 11-3.
In men's epee, Ben McDonald '14 went 10-4, and for the women's squad, Cory Abbe '13 took 12-4 while Laney Caldwell '14 went 11-6.
In women's foil, Kathryn Hawrot '14 won 17 out of 18 bouts fenced, Avery Nackman '13 won 16 out of 18 and Yukiko Kunitomo '12 won seven out of her 10. Francesca Bartholomew '11 won a perfect eight of eight bouts.
The men's fencing squad fought another solid tournament, with Joshua Grill '14 posting eight victories in 10 bouts, and Jonathan Yu '11, James Golin '13 and Scott Philips '11 all posting seven victories out of nine bouts.
"All five members of the team are really good," Grill said. He said that his top score was a matter of placement.
On the women's side, the epee squad posted a score of only two victories to seven against the team.
"Our epee squad wasn't having the best day," Abbe said, despite winning 32-22 against the six schools it faced that day. She said she had won the only two victories for women's epee against Brandeis. Women's foil won seven bouts of their nine, and sabre scored four victories to its five losses.
According to Abbe, Christina Johantgen '14, who went 3-15, won in the last saber bout against Brandeis, giving the women's team a fighting chance. But the foil squad fell short by the one bout that would have bumped the three weapons' total up to a 14-13 winning score.
"Hopefully, they're scared of us next year," Abbe said.
The Bears will not know their overall standing until the teams they have faced in the past two NFC matches face each other.
The men's squad lost to two schools in the first half of the Bear's NFC season at MIT, bringing Brown's record to 22-4 in the tournament.
Both the men's and women's squads will next be in action when they head to MIT for the Eric Sollee Invitational this Sunday.
