Last weekend was the third and final installment of this year’s MAFCA regular season. The team traveled to NJIT to take on a series of varsity teams and service academies.
Highlights:
- First victories over varsity fencers for: Ben Clark ’21 and Troy Cullen ’21,
- Other victories over varsity fencers for: Jonathan Griggs ’21, Faisal Alami ’20, Daniel Bachman ’20, Ben Coleman ’19, and Steven Pressendo ’19
Men’s Saber: Troy Cullen, Daniel Bachman, and Steven Pressendo took on their toughest competition of the season and still managed to post an impressive showing. Troy opened the day with his first ever victory over a varsity fencer, which he quickly followed up with several others against Stevens IT and Yeshiva. His beautiful disengages were so effective that referees and spectators alike laughed at his opponent’s unsuccessful attempts to slow him down. Daniel showed incredible progress throughout the day, closing out with a victory over a dominant Hunter College squad. His speed and aggression surprised even the most experienced opponents, winning crucial bouts for our school. Steven had his most successful MACFA showing to date, featuring a clean sweep of regular season champions NJIT. This trio will look to build off their regular season success when they return to MACFA Championships next weekend.
Women’s Saber: Emory Magner, serving for her first time as acting squad captain, led Madeline Myers and Susan Sun in a day of hard work and excellent fencing. Although the lack of available strips and relatively few competing women’s squads led to long delays between bouts, the trio never lost momentum throughout the day, and ultimately defeated Army eight bouts to one in the final round. Susan found her footing as the day went on, and struck a balance of speed and control that her opponents could not keep up with. Madeline secured many a well-timed counterattack, and won all three of her bouts against Army.
Men’s Foil: Faisal Alami, Ben Clark, and Ben Witman took to the men’s strips this weekend in the last MACFA of the season. The day started against tough opponents in NJIT and Stevens but by the second half of the day all three fencers found their footing. Faisal beat Hunter’s foil captain with quick absence bladework, Ben Clark overwhelmed Yeshiva with his aggression and fast coupés, and Ben Witman had a good sense of distance to land party ripostes against Army. High spirits all around moving into champs!
Women’s Foil: Women’s foil last weekend was a motley assortment, but they still managed to take MACFA AvC by storm. Epeeist Cecilia Hoover ’18 and freshman saberist Julianne Cook ’21 joined Elizabeth Sutterlin ’20 to take on some difficult bouts with NJIT and to win a thrilling victory over Navy. Cecilia was a powerhouse, fencing for both foil and epee squads. Her quick lame-changes between bouts surprised her opponents, almost as much as her great distance and offensive touches. Hazel came in to the tournament as an underdog with only a week’s worth of foil experience, but showed the other schools she was not to be discounted. It was incredible to watch her learn on the strip throughout the day, improving her footwork and bladework to win an impressive bout against Navy. With the lessons from last week’s competition still fresh in her mind, Elizabeth focused on playing to her strengths. She swept Navy and used her defensive game to score beautiful parry-ripostes on all her opponents.
Men’s Epee: Having survived the New Jersey snow, Ben Coleman, Jonathan Griggs, and William Clements feared nothing their opponents could to do them. Persevering through his tournament debut, William counterattacked opponents who underestimated him to remarkably improve throughout the day. Johnathan’s counters earned him considerable success, but truly shone in recognizing his opponents styles to aid himself and his teammates against them. Ben supplemented his strong parries with increasingly active footwork to have his most successful MACFA yet.
Women’s Epee: Despite the weather’s multiple attempts to keep William and Mary’s women’s epee from surviving long enough to take names, they came out of swinging last Sunday. Sarah Sues and Ruoying Hao, led by Cecilia Hoover came to New Jersey to drink coffee and fight, and they were all out of coffee. Sarah quickly adapted to adversity, and with her quick use of parries, confused her opponents into getting too close to her where she finished with fast extensions. Ruoying made use of tempo changes to drive her opponents down the strip, and finished with fast disengages. Cecilia, despite fencing both epee and foil, fought back exhaustion to beat two of the varsity NJIT fencers, and finished the day only dropping a single bout. Women’s epee is looking forward to taking more names in the coming months!
William and Mary’s men’s team will be competing in MACFA Championships at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania on March 4th. Join us in cheering for them over spring break!