St. John's University Athletics
St. John's Qualifies Ten Fencers for NCAA Championships
3/19/2004 12:00:00 AM | Men's Fencing
March 19, 2004
Jamaica, N.Y. -- The St. John's men's and women's fencing teams have qualified 10 individuals for next week's NCAA Championship as the Red Storm aim for their second national championship in program history. St. John's, which won the NCAA title in 2001 and has finished among the top three teams in each of the last three years, departs on Wednesday for Brandeis University, the host for this year's NCAA Championships. The Championships will run from Thursday, March 25 to Sunday March 28 at Brandeis' Gosman Center, with the women's competition being held on the first two days. The maximum number of participants from each school is 12, two per weapon.
The NCAA Men's and Women's Fencing Championships include individual events in each of the six weapons (women's foil, women's epee, women's sabre, men's foil, men's epee, men's sabre). Fencers will compete in a round-robin of 24 fencers in five-touch bouts. After the round-robin, the top four fencers in each event will fence direct elimination 15-touch bouts for first, second, third and fourth place. An institution's place finish in the championships will be based on points earned by each individual. A team will be awarded one point for each victory by its student-athletes for the duration of the championships.
Defending NCAA Champion Notre Dame qualified 11 fencers, while longtime rival Penn State and Ohio State both qualified 12 and Columbia will have 11.
The Red Storm men's team is ranked No.1 in the country, and the women's squad is ranked 10th in the nation. St. John's has qualified the maximum number on the men's side, but only four on the women's side, and did not have a women's epeeist selected for the field.
Despite not having the full complement of fencers, however, the Red Storm's own history shows that a team can win the national title without a 12-person team. The 2001 NCAAs saw a 12-fencer Penn State squad make its bid before finishing second to the Red Storm (180-172). The 2002 NCAAs featured a similar ending, as an 11-fencer St. John's squad nearly won the championship, finishing with 190 points (behind PSU's 195 but ahead of the 186 posted by a 12-fencer ND squad).
The Red Storm men's squad will be led by sophomore Nitai Kfir (Simtat Haveredy, Israel), who was the runner-up in last year's foil competition. Kfir is among a group of six returning All-Americans who will be competing next week. He will be joined by freshman Henry Kennard (Concord, Mass.). In the epee, junior Arpad Horvath (Budapest, Hungary), who finished in sixth place last year and won the NCAA title in 2002, will lead the Red Storm in the epee, joined by freshman Ben Bratton (New York, N.Y.). In the sabre, junior Sergey Isayenko (Cherkassy, Ukraine) is the second-highest finisher returning this year. He finished in fifth place last year, and will be among the fencers battling Ohio State's Adam Crompton for the national title. Senior Darrin Whittmer (West Bloomfield, Mich.), who finished in sixth place in the 2002 championships, will compete as well.
On the women's side, the Red Storm will be led by one of the dominant sabre pairings in the country, two-time All-American selections Christina Crane (Madison, Ga.) and Julia Gelman (Brooklyn, N.Y.). Crane has finished eighth and fifth in first two years, while Gelman was the runner-up in the 2003 competition and finished in third place in 2002. The women's foil competition will be among the strongest at the Championships, with 14 competitors and eight All-American's from last year's competition in the field. St. John's freshmen Erzsebet Garay (Budapest, Hungary) and Amy Delahanty (Louisville, Ky.) will lead the way for St. John's.
Since 1990, St. John's has had eight individuals win 10 NCAA Championships in five of the six weapons. The Red Storm placed 29th at the NCAA Championships in 1990, and was 13th in 1990, but since 1991, St. John's has placed among the top-10 each year. Since head coach Yury Gelman took over in 1995-95, the team has finished no lower than fifth plac