Both the men’s and women’s Brandeis fencing teams headed down to Providence, Rhode Island over the weekend to compete at Brown University in the first of two Northeast Fencing Conference (NFC) meets. As a whole, the team held an impressive 10-2 record, with the women seeing six wins and the men seeing four, and with each respectively only having one loss. By weapon, those using the sabre led the way for the women as they post a 7-0 record. Also undefeated was the men’s foil squad who sat at 5-0 after the weekend. Lastly, there were three groups who lost only a single match: women’s foil, men’s sabre and men’s epee.
The women defeated Smith College 25-2 (Foil-9, Epee-7, Sabre-9), Boston University 21-6 (F-8, E-6, S-7), Sacred Heart University 19-8 (F-9, E-4, S-7), the University of Massachusetts 21-6 (F-9, E-6, S-6), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 16-11 (F-8, E-3, S-5) and the University of New Hampshire 24-3 (F-8, E-9, S-7). The squad’s only loss came to Wellesley College by a score of 10-17 (F-3, E-2, S-5). On the men’s side, the Judges defeated Boston University 23-4 (F-9, E-8, S-6), Sacred Heart University 19-8 (F-5, E-5, S-9), the University of Massachusetts 17-10 (F-7, E-5, S-5) and swept the University of New Hampshire 27-0 (F-9, E-9, S-9). The men’s sole loss was to the Engineers of MIT by a very close margin of 12-15 (F-6, E-2, S-4).
As individuals, Jada Harrison ’22 totaled the most wins for the women, and Gabe Lobo-Berg ’23 led the way for the men. Harrison went undefeated with 16 wins overall in sabre. In her best performances, she was able to sweep opponents 3-0 four times, and also 2-1 in another match. Lobo-Berg fought for eight wins and suffered just one loss in the sabre category.
Also for the women, rookie Ivanna Zavala ’23 won all of her matches, scoring 12-0 in four matches for the weekend. This was the Judges’ only competitor to win every round. Classmate Maggie Shealy ’23 was also impressive, going 13-1 to lose just a single match. Lastly, co-captain Jessica Gets ’20 went 14-1 across five matches as she swept MIT 3-0 and put up a fight against Wellesley 2-1 in the Judges’ only overall loss for the women. Zavala and Gets competed in foil, while Shealy performed in sabre.
For the men, Brandeis also performed quite well against their range of opponents. In the foil category, classmates Trevor Filseth ’20 and Ian Quin ’20 competed in foil, as Filseth went 6-0 in the meet and Quin recorded just one loss with a total of 6-1. Despite the team’s loss to MIT, Quin was able to go 3-0 over his individual opponents in the match. In sabre, Lucas Lin ’22 was undefeated against Sacred Heart, going 3-0 during the team’s 9-0 sweep of the university. Lin was able to finish 6-2 on the weekend. Lastly in epee, Ben Rogak ’23, Josh Shuster ’23 and Garett Tordo ’21 all held 6-3 records in their matches.
The Judges squads will fence again on Saturday, Dec. 1 as they host the first of their two invitational meets at home.
