Lunging Into The New Year

After nearly two months between bouts, the Eagles are ready to hit the piste with gusto when they host the Northeast Fencing Conference Duals this Sunday.

Since coming off of the semester break, the fencing team has been fine tuning their foils, epees and sabres for an intense month of action ahead, hopeful they can set the tone at Sunday's meet by putting themselves in the driver's seat amongst their locally based foes.

"This is the crunch time for us," head coach Syd Fadner said. "We have a lot of good rivalries with these other schools - with Brandeis and MIT and Vassar. Generally, the way our season works, we have two dates of dual meet competition with our Northeast Fencing Conference rivals…After Sunday we will have fenced everybody in the conference. This is a pretty important meet for us. We stand in a position where we could in fact finish in first place in the conference. So, there's a little bit of pressure there for us."

Along with that trio of strong rivals, Boston College will also square off in bouts versus Dartmouth, Tufts and the University of Florida, who are joining the meet as a guest school, providing an even number of teams to the affair, avoiding byes and down time for any squads.

Following the first set of dual meets back in November, the hosts enter Sunday's tilt tied atop the men's women's and combined leaderboards in the conference.

In each of those categories they stand eye-to-eye with the Judges of Brandeis, who Fadner sees as being the biggest hurdle to the Eagles efforts of shoring thins up in the NFC.

"Brandeis is, I think, going to be our toughest match of the day," said the Eagles long-time coach. "They're very strong and have a very competitive team. They're tough. That's going to be the biggest challenge. MIT has some strength, Vassar's epee squad is strong. Every match is going to present its own challenges. I'd have to say that Brandeis is going to be the toughest."

Against such stiff, and familiar competition, Fadner will be looking towards her women's sabre unit - led by junior Laura Donovan who won 18-of-20 bouts in the November duals - to set a tone for things.

The Eagles are also excited to be hosting their lone meet of the season, hopeful that they can take advantage of the home crowd.

"It's very exciting for our athletes to be able to compete in front of their friends from the other teams and the BC community. It absolutely raises the level of their competitive drive to be able to perform at home," Fadner said. "Our women's sabre squad is the strongest top to bottom squad that we have. We're looking for a very strong performance from them. Our women's sabres is really going to set the tone for us."

After training at their home clubs over break, and for two-weeks strong since returning, the Eagles know that keeping themselves in check first and foremost will set a proper tone for their toughest stretch of the season, which includes the Eric Sollee Invitational, the Beanpot and ACC Championship in subsequent weeks.

"We've got a pretty disciplined group on the team. I'm just looking for them all to buckle down, do what they know, fence hard, take care of their bouts and support their teammates," Fadner said. "They're well aware of the importance of this competition and what it will mean for the rest of our seasons."

The first allez of the Northeast Fencing Conference Duals is set for 10:00 a.m. at the Flynn Recreation Complex, with the Eagles starting a six-match day off versus Florida.

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Players Mentioned

Laura Donovan