St. John's University Athletics
St. John's Fencing Aims for Second NCAA Championship
3/17/2005 12:00:00 AM | Fencing
March 17, 2005
Queens, NY - The St. John's University men's and women's fencing teams departed New York City on Wednesday afternoon for Houston, where they hoped to make school history. With the maximum 12 fencers participating in the 2005 NCAA Championships, which begin on Thursday at Rice University, the Red Storm team will be seeking the program's second-ever NCAA Team Championship, and the third overall for St. John's.
The 2005 NCAA Championships will be held from March 17-20 at the George Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston. Daily updates from the NCAA Championships, including feature stories on members of the Red Storm fencing teams, will be available on the St. John's Athletics website.
St. John's enters this year's NCAA Championships off of a sterling performance at the NCAA Northeast Regional, where they qualified 12 fencers (two from each weapon on both the men's and women's sides). The Red Storm were the only team in the country to qualify 12 fencers for the competition.
The Red Storm, who have finished among the top-five at the NCAAs the last 10 years, will have strong competition facing them this weekend in Houston. Ohio State and Notre Dame each qualified 11 fencers for the championships. The 144-fencer field includes four schools that have combined to win the last 11 NCAA titles from 1994-2004, with each one winning one in the last four years (St. John's in 2001, Penn State in 2002, Notre Dame in 2003 and Ohio State in 2004).
"This is the first time I can remember that we've qualified 12 and we're thrilled about that," St. John's Head Coach Yury Gelman said, "but there are many strong teams throughout the country and we know that we will have to perform our best to come out on top. We're very excited and are looking forward to the competition."
The National Collegiate 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. Absolute ties for the seeding will be broken as follows: for positions one through three, by a coin toss; for position four, by a fence-off. 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.
The Red Storm will be led by a men's team that was ranked third in the country this season and has a lineup that includes seven fencers who have earned 12 All-American honors.
Senior Arpad Horvath (Budapest, Hungary) enters the NCAAs seeking his third individual title in the epee, and his second in the last two years. Sophomore Ben Bratton (New York, NY) was the runner-up in the epee last year, and senior Sergey Isayenko (Cherkassy, Ukraine) placed fourth in the sabre competition as a sophomore and was the runner-up as a junior.
On the women's side, senior Christina Crane (Madison, GA) will be looking for her first NCAA title in the sabre after finishing among the top-eight her first three years. Newcomer Joanna Guy (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) won the NCAA Northeast Regional epee title and freshman Reka Szele (Budapest, Hungary) placed seventh. In the foil, sophomore Erzsebet Garay (Budapest, Hungary) and freshman Katia Larchanka (Minsk, Belarus) are coming off strong performances at the regional and will be major factors for the Red Storm.
Players Mentioned
