Continuing its strong start to the season, the men’s fencing team competed at the MACFA “A vs B” at the Stevens Institute of Technology last Sunday. The Leopards went 4-1 overall, beating Stevens 17-10, Hunter College 22-5, Yeshiva 21-6 and Army 20-7, and falling 17-10 to the New Jersey Institute of Technology.
Senior foil Amir Whitehead won 13 of his bouts, leading the way for the Leopards. Senior foil Benito Hergert and freshman sabre Nikita Kogan each tallied 12 wins and junior epee Tyler Morse added 11.
“The meet was pretty good,” Kogan wrote in an email. “We found some pretty good schools. We got to fence Yale. The reffing was pretty good for the most part, but there were a few bad refs here and there.”
“The highlight of the day was probably fencing Yale and winning two bouts and losing one of them,” he continued.
Although Kogan put together a successful outing, he emphasized a desire to change up his tactics for upcoming competitions.
“In the future, I want to change my fencing style a little bit to fence more aggressively and try to take more initiative in the bouts,” he wrote.
Senior epee Antoine Mannes, freshman epee Ryan Leibowitz and freshman sabre Jordan Ginsberg all won 10 bouts.
Ginsberg noted he was happy with the team’s overall performance, referencing the team being “rounded out” on all fronts.
“The sabre squad in the past hasn’t been as strong,” Ginsberg said. “The sabre team is a lot stronger than it was and our foil squad is really, really good, and our epee squad is also really good this year.”
However, Ginsberg was critical of his individual performances, specifically against Stevens and NJIT.
“I lost two of the three bouts that I fenced, and in the past against Stevens, I’ve done better and I’ve fenced better,” he said.
Moving forward with preparation for the season, Ginsberg pointed to joint trainings between the sabres and epees as something that will benefit the team.
“We train by ourselves and we do our own footwork for sabre, but recently, we’ve been joining the epee squad and working out with them,” Ginsberg said. “I think it’s gonna help our conditioning a little bit.”
Sunday’s meet marked the team’s last outing of the calendar year. The Leopards will compete next on Jan. 18 at the Philadelphia Invite hosted by the University of Pennsylvania.