FENCING — As the final warm-up before starting the official
NCAA competition, UCSD fencers hosted their annual Bladerunner meet on Jan. 5
and 6. Unlike most meets, Bladerunner
was not a team contest but instead an open competition, where fencers
represented themselves and their scores counted only toward their personal
finish. This style allowed for UCSD to face off against other fencers that they
would not normally see in intercollegiate play, providing preparation for the
NCAA West Invitational coming up on Jan. 12-13 in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Head coach Heidi Runyan said she thought that the unique
challenges in the open competition created a more unique aspect to the meet.
“Many of the opponents have more experience than the average
collegiate fencer and there are direct elimination bouts that go to 15 touches,
instead of the usual five,” Runyan said. “Fencing smart and being in good
condition are even more important to success.”
Sophomore Sean Blum, who finished sixth in epee, welcomed
the new format and said that it would challenge him and his teammates while
allowing them to fence without worrying about the team’s overall performance.
“Because Bladerunner was an open event, it drew tougher
opponents than we have had to fence in the SoCal intercollegiate conference, especially
in men’s and women’s epee,” Blum said. “We have to fence a lot of
strangers, which brings some nervousness, especially when the strangers
are world-class fencers from Europe like Benoit Bouysset and Andrea
Rentmeister.”
The fencers that Blum alluded to are two of the fencing
world’s top names, with Bouysset hailing from France and Rentmeister from
Austria. Having this added level of elite competition helped stoke a fun but
aggressive atmosphere at the meet, according to some of the participants.
Senior Emily Lipoma took first place in women’s foil out of
20 fencers, most of which were highly rated as either B- or C-tier fencers. In
men’s saber, freshman Zach Jones notched a fantastic rookie performance with
his first-place finish, with fellow Triton sophomore Bryan Kim taking third.
The NCAA West Invitational in Colorado this weekend will be
the first serious road trip of the season for UCSD, and will be a good
transition from local meets to the competition that the Tritons will eventually
be seeing at the National Championships in Columbus, Ohio, in March.
“Traveling will certainly be a change,” Lipoma
said. “The competition that we will face when we travel [to Colorado] will
be much stronger than the competition we see in our Southern California
conference. However, we will be traveling with a fairly seasoned team and
traveling shouldn’t pose too much of a problem.”
Sophomore saberist Anne Marie Schnecker, whose only loss at
Bladerunner was to the eventual tournament champion, also said that the road
trip will not hinder the team’s growing momentum and success.
“With fencing, there is not really all that much advantage
to fencing at home as opposed to fencing away, so I don’t think that Colorado
will be too much of a challenge for us,” Schnecker said. “I heard … that it
is pretty hard to breathe there because of the high elevation, so I think that
could be the only difference. Besides that, I really think that we’ll do well
at the meet.”
Runyan is looking forward to facing off against some of the
toughest schools in the country, a chance that is not often presented to her
team in the Southern California Conference.
“We really are looking forward to facing Stanford,” coach
Runyan said. “They are a strong school, but we match up well against them and
can take them if we are fencing sharp.”
After the competition in Colorado Springs, the Tritons will
look to their meets at the North American Cup in Atlanta on Jan. 18 and the
Northwestern tournament in Chicago on Feb. 2 in order to start qualifying their
fencers for NCAA Regionals.
