Fencing Concludes Successful Season

Photo by Brittany Barnett.

By Broadside Sports Editor Brian Chan

Even a first-year club that won a conference championship still has goals for its subsequent years. The George Mason University fencing club wrapped up their inaugural season, winning the Baltimore-Washington Collegiate Fencing Conference championships last weekend.

Mason finished first overall with the sabre and epee teams taking second and the foil team earning a third-place finish. Junior club president Chris Atwood took the second-place medal in sabre while junior Josh Reed ranked ninth in epee, freshmen Victoria Owens and Jay Carty placed fifth and sixth in foil, respectively, in the individual competitions at University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

“We definitely exceeded my expectations because this is our first year joining the conference. I was hoping to finish in the top 50 percent, ideally within the top three or four teams. Going undefeated is way more than I expected and I’m really happy for the guys,” said Atwood.

The team had a successful first year by sweeping the competition in November’s meet and again defeated all five schools in February. Mason defeated Goucher College 24-3, Millersville University 19-8, Penn State University Fencing Club 16-11, Temple University 18-9 and UMBC 15-12. Against Penn State FC, the foil squad lost 2-7, but the epee and sabre squads made up for foil’s loss with each squad winning 7-2. Both the foil and epee teams fell 4-5 against UMBC, but the sabre squad went 7-2 to provide the team with the overall win.

Atwood was the best sabre fencer on the team with a 25-3 record and was the second best in the conference. Sophomore Kyle Lange also had a successful season at sabre, going 13-2. Carty went 22-4 and Owens went 19-7 in foil and Reed finished with a 16-13 record in epee.

This year, the fencing club competed in three events since Atwood did not want to provide an overload for the fencers since it was only their first year. Next year, the team plans to compete in six to seven events.

According to Atwood, the ultimate goal is to get more people in order to have a better chance to compete. In addition, he would like to have a bigger budget to work with.

“The more people who are getting exposed to fencing, the more good fencers we’re going to have, which helps the club in every way,” said Atwood. “We haven’t done as much this semester, but especially starting next semester, we’re going to be doing more to advertise to increase awareness for our club, just doing things like sidewalk chalking, kiosks in the Johnson Center, activity fairs.”

With an already diverse team, where fencers are of different years and majors, all fencers share the common interest of willingness to work hard in fencing.
For Atwood, he will spend this summer attending the United States Fencing Association Coaches College in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center as he hopes to learn training methods to bring back to the team next year.