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NATIONAL CHAMPIONS

I know I tend to be a little football heavy here and probably don't give the other Penn State sports teams their due outside of an occassional basketball post or two. But when a team wins a National Title for Penn State, well dammit, that deserves some recognition.

Congratulations to the men's and women's fencing team for bringing home the NCAA National Championship trophy. This is Penn State's tenth national championship under head coach Emmanuil Kaidanov and their first since 2002 after finishing in second place last year.

Three Nittany Lions made it to the gold round, which is like the final round, except it's gold or something. Freshman Anastasia Ferdman finished fourth in the epee division. I don't know what that means. As far as I can tell they are dueling with zucchini.

Sophomore Caitlin Thompson did well coming up just short in the final match of the saber division. Ok sabers. I know what those are.


Not that kind of saber

Freshman Doris Willette led the Lions winning the gold medal. She was forced to fight? duel? compete against her teammate Tamara Najm who would go on to finish fourth overall in the foil. Now what's the difference between a foil and a saber?

Surprisingly, there was no media photographers at the event so it's really hard to find pictures of the tournament. BSD was able to obtain this exclusive photo from the match.

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I took fencing as one of my phys eds at PSU
Very simply, a sabre is a flatter weapon and you can score with the edge of the blade on strikes from the waist up, whereas a foil is more like a large "skewer" type weapon and can only score with strikes by the point to the torso.

by PSU Nick on Mar 25, 2007 10:24 PM EDT   0 recs

also...
Epee points are scored with the point like foil, but unlike foil, the whole body is target area.

Also, it is worth noting that the NCAA has only been administering a team fencing championship since 1990, which means that Penn State has won 10 out of the 18 TOTAL championships, and Penn State has been runner-up an additional 7 times.

Now for our other sports teams to match this level of success.

by Ben on Mar 26, 2007 12:32 AM EDT   0 recs

Penn State: Fencing juggernaut
Don't mess with us, we'll get all zoro on your ass!!

by Galen on Mar 26, 2007 10:50 AM EDT   0 recs

Fencing Machines
I knew that we were awesome at fencing, but just take a look at this list of NCAA Fencing Champs since 1990...

1990     Penn State    
1991     Penn State    
1992     Columbia-Barnard (we were 2nd)   
1993     Columbia-Barnard (we were 2nd)   
1994     Notre Dame (we were 2nd)
1995     Penn State    
1996     Penn State    
1997     Penn State    
1998     Penn State    
1999     Penn State    
2000     Penn State    
2001     St. John's (we were 2nd)
2002     Penn State    
2003     Notre Dame (We were 2nd)
2004     Ohio State (we were 2nd)
2005     Notre Dame
2006     Harvard (we were 2nd)
2007     Penn State

by The Brewer Patriot on Mar 26, 2007 4:06 PM EDT   0 recs

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