BY KEVIN FRIEDENBERG

In print | Published November 2, 2006

Though not everyone has heard of the fencing club at Swarthmore College, it has indeed been around for many years. Recently, however, the club has taken off as more and more people have become interested in the sport. This past weekend marks the third time in the club’s history that the team has participated in the Temple Open, a fencing tournament held annually at Temple University in Philadelphia. This year the team brought 10 men and seven women to participate in the tournament with the women fencing on Saturday and the men on Sunday.

The fencing tournament used a Brazilian style, which means that the fencers were divided into six-person pools that competed in a round-robin format. Based on these results, another set of round-robin pools was organized, with a tournament-style bracket being made based on the results of this second round of pools. “The Brazilian style is a good format because it gives each fencer an extra four or five bouts, which makes it excellent for beginners,” team co-captain Fletcher Coleman ’09 said. Of the three possible sword types used in fencing — epee, foil and saber — only epee and foil were featured at the tournament, with a majority of the Swarthmore fencers competing in the foil division.

Out of 82 fighters competing in the men’s foil division, Coleman placed 27th, and in the men’s epee division, Manoli Strecker ‘07 placed 36th out of 74 fighters. "We’re very proud," Coleman said of the team’s performance, since a majority of the fencers were beginners with little or no experience. Team captains Coleman, Randall McAuley ‘08, and Ben Blonder ’08 all have prior experience from fencing at the high school level. An important part of the team’s success was the fact that many men on the team went to support the women on their fight day and vice-versa, so that the team was an established presence at the tournament, not just a disjointed group of people.

The women also had success, with Allison Barlow ‘08 placing 19th in the women’s epee division out of 76 and Marcella Sumaydeng-Bryan ‘10 placing 35th out of 65 in the women’s foil division.

“The best thing were the people who just started fencing last year and have shown extraordinary improvement across the board,” McAuley said. Blonder agreed. “The beginners got a really great exposure to the world of competitive fencing at this tournament,” he said.

The fencing club meets twice a week on Thursdays and Saturdays in the field house for practice and anyone regardless of prior fencing experience is welcome to participate. The team hopes to contact some collegiate club coaches regarding setting up fencing matches in the spring at the collegiate club level. Yet as of now the club’s main short-term goal is just having its members improve their skills and educating the beginner students in the art of fencing.

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