Women's Fencing Wins Five of Six Matches at First NFC Meet

CHESTNUT HILL, MA (January 22, 2023) - In its first Northeast Fencing Conference (NFC) meet of the season, the Tufts University women's fencing team had a strong performance with a 5-1 record on Sunday. Tufts defeated Vassar 21-6, suffered its only loss of the day to Brandeis 15-12, and then finished the competition with victories against Brown (15-12), host Boston College (17-10), MIT (17-10) and Dartmouth (21-6).

Starting the NFC action today the Jumbos rolled to a 21-6 victory over Vassar. Tufts went 9-0 in foil and saber, with Shannon Chen and Sydnee Lau both earning 3-0 records in foil. Lea Levi helped complete the foil sweep with two wins. Anat Katz went 3-0 in saber while Alexia Newell, Millie Girardi and Emily Valadez each won twice.

In the close loss to Brandeis, Levi posted a 3-0 mark in foil, which Tufts won 5-4. Karen Bei with two victories in epee and Newell winning twice in saber led Tufts in those weapons.

The 15-12 victory over Brown saw Bei in epee and Newell in saber both win all three of their bouts versus the Bears. The Jumbos earned a 7-2 margin in saber with Girardi adding two wins. Lau and Levi both won two out of three in foil, where the Jumbos were on top with a 5-4 score. Tufts had lost to Brown 17-10 at the Brandeis Invitational earlier in the season.

After a break for lunch, the team returned to action with a 17-10 win over host Boston College. Foil's Lau and Daniella Davia both had 3-0 marks as the Jumbos won 7-2 there. The epee and saber squads both earned close 5-4 wins with 2-1 records by Arianna Minassian and Bei in epee, and two wins each from Newell and Valadez led in saber.

A 9-0 score in foil paced Tufts to a 17-10 victory against MIT, which guaranteed the Jumbos a winning record for the day. Chen, Lau and Davia all shut out their opponents. A tight 5-4 Jumbo advantage in saber featured two wins from Valadez.

Tufts defeated Dartmouth 21-6 to end the day. Perfect 3-0 records were achieved by Levi and Davia in foil and Valadez and Katz in saber where the Jumbos had 8-1 victories in both weapons. Olivia Tomasello also led epee to a 5-4 win in the match with a 3-0 mark.

For the six contests, Tufts went 43-11 in foil (.796), 23-31 in epee (.426) and 37-17 in saber (.685). All four foil fencers had great days with Levi posting an 11-2 mark (.846), Lau taking 12 of 15 bouts (.800), Davia earning an 11-3 record (.786) and Chen finishing 9-3 (.750). Bei was a solid 10-5 in epee (.667), while Newell at 10-3 (.769), Katz winning 75-percent (9 of 12) and Valadez with an 11-4 record (.733) all saw success in saber.  

The five team victories in six matches today improved Tufts' overall record for the season to 11-9. The Jumbos will host an NFC meet for their next action on February 5.