FENCING — The UCSD fencing team used momentum generated at
the difficult Northwestern Meet two weekends ago to crush its three opponents —
Cal Tech, Cal State Fullerton and UC Irvine — on Feb. 10. The four teams had
already met earlier this season in a preseason warm-up that UCSD won handily,
but the margin of victory was still nowhere near as wide as it was this time.
The Tritons steamrolled their competition, with the men beating Cal Tech 25-2,
Cal State Fullerton 24-3 and UC Irvine 26-1, and the women defeating Cal Tech
24-3, Cal State Fullerton 23-4 and UC Irvine 24-3.

The dominating wins are made even more impressive by the
fact that UCSD won the meet without most of its top fencers. In a smaller meet
like this one, competing fencers from other schools are usually not as highly
ranked as Triton fencers, so sending UCSD’s top fencers against these schools
would have created a lose-lose situation.

According to senior Chelsea Ambort of the epee squad, if a
higher ranked fencer fences a lower ranked player, it brings down their
strength points even if the better fencer wins. This system is designed to give
unranked fencers a chance of qualifying for the NCAA Regionals. Regardless of
the fact that their best fencers took the weekend off, the Tritons were still
able to win due to the team’s depth.

“Even without our starters competing that day, we rocked the
competition,” Ambort said. “It just shows how strong of a team UCSD fencing is,
we can put our alternates in and still sweep the day.”

The ranking system, coupled with the lesser competition at
the meet, gave UCSD the opportunity to give match time to some fencers who had
not competed much this year. Even with a new lineup, the team was able to win
relatively easily with all of the newer players performing well.

“After all of these substitutions, I didn’t know what to
expect,” sophomore epee Sean Blum said. “It turns out that the result barely
changed; all of the subs did a fantastic job. We were working really well
together, giving each other advice on the strip, that really helped us
dominate.”

A major highlight of the meet was the play of sophomore
sabrist Bryan Kim, who won 5-1 over the weekend and remains the only undefeated
fencer on the entire UCSD squad. Kim and the rest of the Tritons will next
travel to the Intercollegiate Fencing Conference of Southern California.

“[The IFCSC] is going to be important, but regionals is our
main concern,” junior foil Zitin Kachru said. “It’s worth 60 percent of our
NCAA season and most of our focus is on that already, and not so much on the
IFCSC, since hardly any of those matches count for NCAA points.”

Blum agreed with Kachru, choosing to work toward regionals
as their main source of motivation.

“I think that it will only be important as a training
opportunity and as a morale builder, as far as regionals are concerned,” Blum
said. “We’re not fencing any of our NCAA opponents that day. Of course, IFCSC
is important for its own sake. It will be the final event in a great season,
and we cannot get lazy if we want to win the gold in conference.”