St. John's University Athletics
St. John's Fencing Heads To 2013 NCAA Championships
3/19/2013 12:00:00 AM | Fencing
March 19, 2013
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QUEENS, N.Y. - After collecting six medals during the NCAA Northeast Regionals, St. John's has qualified 11 fencers (one short of the maximum) for the NCAA Championships, which take place at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio, Texas, from March 21-24. The men will compete from March 21-22 and the women will compete from March 23-24.
The 144 total competitors will fence in a round-robin format of five-touch bouts. After the round-robin, the top-four finishers will fence in a semifinal round with 15-touch bouts, with the winners fencing to determine first and second places, and the losers being awarded a tie for third place.
ESPN3 will broadcast the men's semifinal and final rounds on Friday, March 22 and the women's semifinal and final rounds on Sunday, March 24. Both broadcasts will begin at 2:45 p.m.
A school's placement 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.
St. John's is one of six schools that qualified 11 fencers (the others are Columbia, Harvard, defending champion Ohio State, Penn State, and Stanford). Only two schools - Notre Dame and Princeton - qualified the maximum of 12.
Since men's and women's teams began competing together in 1990, St. John's has won one NCAA Championship (2001), has made five runner-up finishes, and has had 19 individual NCAA Champions. Below are the Red Storm's participants in the 2013 NCAA Championships:
MEN'S SABER
2012 U.S. Olympian and redshirt senior Daryl Homer (51-6 regular season record), a three-time First Team All-American and two-time individual NCAA Champion, and senior Sean Buckley (49-8), a two-time Second Team All American, will represent the men's saber squad. At the 2013 NCAA Northeast Regionals, Homer won his fourth-career Regional gold medal, while Buckley placed sixth.
MEN'S FOIL
Junior Eli Schenkel (21-11), a 2012 All-American honorable mention, and freshman Michele Caporizzi (35-12), an Italian Junior National Team member, will represent the men's foil squad. At this year's NCAA Northeast Regionals, Schenkel won silver - his third-career Regional medal - and Caporizzi placed fourth.
MEN'S EPEE
Senior Adam Watson (42-15), a fourth place finisher at Regionals, will represent the men's epee squad. This won't be Watson's first appearance at the NCAA Championships (he competed in foil as a freshman), but the senior will be making his first appearance in epee.
WOMEN'S SABER
Junior Anna Limbach (52-8), a 2012 First Team All-American, and freshman Margaret McDonald (29-13), a silver medal winner at Regionals, will represent the women's saber squad, which won more bouts than any Red Storm squad this season. McDonald will be making her NCAA Championship debut, while Limbach will be looking to build off of her bronze medal finish at the 2012 NCAA Championships.
Junior Alexandra Tannous (35-25) also qualified, but because schools are allowed a maximum of two fencers per weapon at NCAA Championships, she will not compete.
WOMEN'S FOIL
Senior Evgeniya Kirpicheva (47-10), a three-time First Team All-American, and freshman Marta Hausman (29-21), a fourth place finisher at Regionals, will represent the women's foil squad. After winning bronze as a freshman and sophomore, Kirpicheva won the individual NCAA Championship as a junior. If the native of Ufa, Russia, finishes in the top-four on Saturday, she will look to defend her title on Sunday.
Senior and three-time All-American Irina Koroleva (26-19) also qualified, but like Tannous, her Fencer Seeding Factor (the determining factor in NCAA Championship qualification) was the third-highest on her squad.
WOMEN'S EPEE
Junior Alina Ferdman (32-20), a 2012 Second Team All-American and gold medal winner at this year's Regionals, and junior Zsofia Fath (36-19), who will make her third-straight NCAA Championships appearance, will represent the women's epee squad. Fath, a two-time Regional bronze medalist, placed fifth at the 2013 Northeast Regionals, while Ferdman won her first-career Regional gold medal.
For more on the St. John's fencing program, follow the official twitter account (@STJ_Fencing) or log onto redstormsports.com.
Players Mentioned
