UCSD women earn first place in senior saber team event.
The UC San Diego fencing team had a great showing in St. Louis at the North American Cup, Jan. 8 to 11, starred by a gold medal performance by the women’s saber squad.
A trio of freshmen saber competitors, Lillian Chu, Leanne Singleton-Comfort and Savanah Tiffany combined to take first place in the women’s saber senior team event. UCSD edged out the Jiangsu Fencing Team, 45–44, to earn the gold.
Singleton-Comfort was UC San Diego’s top placer in junior women’s saber and Division-I women’s saber, finishing 10th and 24th respectively. Chu took 41st in Division-I women’s saber with Taylor Walsh finishing 83 and Tiffany taking 84th. In junior women’s saber, Chu finished 58th and Tiffany 88th.
In Division-I men’s foil, sophomore David Hadler tied for 11th in a field of 196 competitors. Hadler eventually lost to Olympian and 2013 world champion Miles Chamley-Watson after winning three consecutive direct-elimination bouts. Chamley-Watson would go on to take silver in the tournament. Stanford’s Alexander Massialis, also an Olympian, won the event.
Hadler also performed well in junior men’s foil, finishing eighth of 173 competitors. He earned a No. 15 seed in the direct elimination round’s seed by going 6–0 in pool play. Hadler won four straight bouts after having a bye in the opening round. He would eventually lose to Canada’s Daniel Gu, the event’s silver medalist.
Freshman Thejas Gulati and Evan George finished 21st and 62nd, respectively, in junior men’s saber.
Among other results, UCSD finished 22nd in the men’s epee senior team bracket with a team composed of Sean Callaghan, Alex Okamoto and Scott Phillips. In Division I men’s foil, Hadler, Brian Howard and Mitchell Shulman finished fifth out of the nine teams. Drew Dickinson, George and Gulati took sixth out of 11 in men’s saber senior team; Dickinson and George also finished in the top hundred fencers in men’s saber division I.
The Tritons play on Sunday, Jan. 17, as they host the West Invitational at RIMAC Arena. The event will also serve as the Western Fencing Conference Team Championship. The UC San Diego women won the conference last season, while the men placed second. Along with UCSD, the WFC is comprised of Air Force Academy, Caltech, Incarnate Word and Stanford.
