Northwestern University Athletics
Mahen's Fencing Blog • 2011
1/27/2011 12:00:00 AM | Women's Fencing
Entry Three - March 3, 2011
Greetings Wildcat fans!
It's that time of year again--postseason fencing! In 24 hours your Wildcat fencers will be traveling to the Golden Dome (Notre Dame) to compete in the Midwest Fencing Championships! It's been a crazy couple of weeks leading up to this weekend, with our last dual meet last weekend right here in Patten Gymnasium.We had a great weekend last week, posting an impressive 10-0 record. It was a long day of fencing, but everyone on the team had the opportunity to compete--a rarity in fencing. We'll see all these teams again this weekend at the conference championship, so this was a good indicator of the success to come!
Our toughest competition this weekend will be long time rivals Notre Dame and Ohio State. We have, so far, been unable to beat Notre Dame this season, but know it's within our grasp (and what better place then in their house during the conference championships?!)
We've also struggled to defeat Ohio State this season, but after a great showing at the NYU duals, we know that it's only one touch away!
The weekend is one of the most arduous of the season, with two full days of fencing. The first day is the individual competition where every fencer on every team will compete in their respective weapons for the individual conference championship. The results from the individual competition will help determine the seeding for Sunday's team competition.
Last year, our own Alicia Gurrieri won the individual saber competition, Dayana Sarkisova took third in the foil competition and Kayley French finished third in epee. We hope to continue our tradition of success in the individual competition to score a great seed on Sunday.
All in all, this weekend is our opportunity to show our strength in one of the toughest conferences in the country and we're ready for the challenge!
Go `Cats!!
--Jillian
Entry Two - February 11, 2011 Hello Wildcat fans! It's been a crazy couple of weeks with the fencing team traveling and hosting! Our Notre Dame tournament two weeks ago was an overall success, however we were disappointed to fall short to Notre Dame. We'll get another shot at them during the conference championships the first week in March. Last weekend we hosted our annual NU Duals and Saturday was senior recognition day! Up to that point, senior year didn't seem real to me. It was a strange to realize that that was the last tournament I would fence in SPAC! However, it was a slow start to the day and the whole team struggled to get the adrenaline running and get excited. We were disappointed when we fell short to both Temple and Ohio State. We were expecting to beat both schools as we had such great results against both of them the last time we fenced. But, one of the hardest parts of fencing is to control your emotions and keep a perfect balance of excitement, nerves, relaxation and the general desire to win. If you want it too much you can mentally over strategize and throw your game, if you don't want it enough and you're too relaxed, you can fall flat and lose your reaction time. In such a mental sport, it's important to maintain control of your body at all times and we were not able to do that on Saturday morning. The following day of NU Duals was much better in terms of excitement. We fell to Princeton but did a great job at holding our own. I don't think Princeton was expecting us to come out as strong as we did and we definitely gave them something to think about when they left the strip. We made them work for every touch and really prove that they were as good as the polls say. This weekend we're off to sunny North Carolina (finally escaping the sub-zero weather in Chicago) to fence Duke and North Carolina. It's a small event but should be really fun. Duke has a very strong saber squad, including Olympic bronze medalist Becca Ward. But, our girls have been training hard all week and a couple of tweaks to our regular practice regiment have put everyone back on their toes and hungry for a victory. I will keep you updated on the successes of the weekend! GO CATS!! -Jillian Mahen Entry One - January 26, 2011 Hey Wildcat Fans! It's been a busy couple days recovering from a long but great weekend on the east coast and preparing for our competition this weekend in South Bend, Ind. We had our first big meets of the year last weekend, facing three top-eight teams on Saturday at NYU and then trucking on down to Philadelphia to fence two more top-10 teams. Saturday got off to a great start with a victory against No. 6 Columbia-Barnard! (They're ranked one place above us!) Columbia always has a strong team with top ranked individuals and it was nice to sweep them in foil and secure a `W' overall. Our toughest meets were against No. 1 Notre Dame and No. 10 Ohio State. We fence both schools at the Midwest Conference Championships in March and this was our first meeting of the year. We were only one touch away from beating Ohio State (arguably our biggest rival)! We came out strong in all three weapons. But fell short in saber. Ohio State is a notoriously a strong program and the score doesn't reflect how close saber came to a victory. There were four bouts that were lost 4-5. Literally, only a couple touches from a victory! Foil and epee had a great round posting 5-4 and 7-2, respectively. We see OSU again at home on February 4th. We hope to see all you Wildcat fans out there cheering us on against those Buckeyes! Although we suffered a 11-16 loss to Notre Dame, we had a solid performance in all three weapons. There's definitely room for improvement, but we all came back knowing we can beat them. After our meet at NYU, we hopped on the bus and drove through New Jersey, (stopping at my house for a quick dinner) and continued on to Philadelphia. We got to the hotel around 10:30 p.m. and everyone was exhausted. After fencing for about eight hours and traveling again for three, we all needed some sleep! The meet began at 8:30 a.m. at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pa. We had another long day with two more top-10 teams. Our first meet of the day was against No. 8 Temple -- another one of our big rivals. Fortunately we were able to secure a win, thanks to epee's very strong performance. Both foil and saber had disappointing results and struggled to adjust to the referees- one of the most frustrating parts of fencing. Five hours later when we finally got to fence No. 9 UPenn, we came out strong in all weapons, and picked up some great bouts in saber. When the 12 hour day finally came to a close, we had swept the tournament and finished the weekend 10-2. Needless to say, it was a very long but rewarding weekend! This week we're eagerly preparing for our second shot at tarnishing Notre Dame's No.1 ranking and the opportunity to improve our already sterling record. We'll fence 8 schools on Saturday and plan on taking home 8 victories! I'll keep you updated on what should be a great weekend!
