Banding Together For Sport & For Team

Saturday, February 6

Queens, N.Y.

Boston College

St. John's University

Photo by: John Quackenbos

February 05, 2021 | Fencing, #ForBoston Files

This is a whole new fencing landscape for BC.

By: Dan Rubin, BCEagles.com contributor

Fencing is a sport measured in milliseconds. Its athletes access the mountains of data stored in their brains before their attacks, and their feints and ripostes are all determined by the precision and preparation fostered by years of training. The unmatched intensity is measured only by points scored, but the fencers themselves are machines accustomed to the various starts and stops within a bout.

The sport requires a unique physical and emotional makeup on the piste, and the college version tests its athletes' acumen with all-day and weekend-long tournaments. Recovery and development between bouts is critical, but so is the patience of long days spent studying others at their craft. This year, that's something completely different for a team like Boston College, which will compete in a sprinted, abbreviated season unlike anything college fencing has ever seen.

"It's going to feel a little strange this year," Eagles head coach Brendan Doris-Pierce said, "but I think the strangeness of the season is offset by the excitement for our team to actually get back out there. You have the heartbreak of the way the season ended last year, and the uncertainty that was the fall. It's going to look a little different, but it more than balances out just by getting on the strip."

Last season saw BC celebrate the kind of year-round success coaches and athletes only hope to achieve. The team started the season in November by earning 12 different top-three finishes at the NEIFC Fall Invitational and continued its dominance a week later with 12 wins at the first Northeast Fencing Conference meet at Brown University. The defending conference champion in both genders, the Eagles won their fifth consecutive women's league title two months later while clinching their second consecutive men's banner in a conference meet hosted in Chestnut Hill.

The accolades rolled through February's 4-2 finish at the Eric Sollee Invitational and a second place at the Beanpot, and the ACC Championship finished with a near-upset of North Carolina by the men's side. It qualified nearly two dozen fencers for the NCAA Regionals at Cornell University, and BC's finish saw three members chosen for the NCAA Championships the next week.

COVID-19 ultimately prevented that splash from ever reaching fruition. It canceled the end of winter and spring seasons, and fencing ended with the same black hole as the other NCAA contenders and hopefuls. The empty feeling would linger, and it would stretch through the fall when the NCAA moved its autumn championships into the spring. The sport found its elite national competitions condensed into a shortened, regional-based sprint, a far cry from the year-round heights it enjoyed in previous iterations.

"We focused on team building and team bonding from the beginning (of this year)," Doris-Pierce said. "We wanted to sprint the last three or four weeks to really decide, to really test out what the practice schedule was going to be like. The focus needed to be technical and tactical, and it was fitness-based for structure, but a large part of the first semester was really spent trying to bring the team closer together."

The end result is a new look and perspective for the sport and its competitors. Without the long tournaments, BC is instead competing in three dual meets before the four-team conference championship in North Carolina. That will lead into a month break before the NCAA Regionals at locations yet to be determined and the NCAA Championships at Penn State over two weekends in March.

It's a completely different look for a sport fundamentally altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. BC will open the season against St. John's on Saturday, a team that finished ranked fourth in men's fencing and just outside the top-10 on the women's side in the 2020 year-end polls. The No. 4 Red Storm are the second-highest ranked team returning for the 2021 season after No. 1 Harvard and No. 2 Columbia both cancelled winter sports as part of the larger Ivy League suspension.

That conference's decision to cancel its season removed four nationally-ranked teams from the men's pool and an additional five from the women's side. It's an unfortunate reality for the sport's top tier, but the loss further opens an opportunity for new teams to slide into the upper rankings with good showings at the right time. A fast start for the Eagles at St. John's would go a long way before its next two competitions at Sacred Heart and Drew University, one year after BC finished with votes received in both national polls.

"The goal is to get through this as healthy and with as good a competitive experience as possible," Doris-Pierce said. "We have a real chance to make a dent in the NCAA, and I think this season is just about keeping everyone healthy to keep pushing towards that path. We are remarkably competitive in all six weapons.

"They have been supremely motivated to make the most of their own individual practice and to make the most of every opportunity on the strip," he stressed. "They've realized that in a lot of ways, our practices have been more competitive than in years past. We entered score competitions for a couple of weapons, and even after those events, the time, the competitiveness, and the team spirit amongst these squads was just as high. People are really trying to get every ounce of fencing and every ounce of the BC athletic experience out of this season."

It doesn't hurt to have the pure talent returning, either. Both Bin Huang and Spencer Kuldell return after earning NCAA Championship bids on the men's a year ago, and Will Smith and Aiden Banyon-Mrak both advanced to the third round of the NCAA Northeast Regional. Thomas Junseo Park joins them as part of the team's epee team, with Kuldell and Bolang Meng backstopping the sabre. Huang and Wang both return for the men's foil.

The women, meanwhile, return three epee fencers from the third round of last year, including Cosima Martus, who had a 13th-place finish, and Christina Ko, who finished 17th. In foil, Kate Devereaux, Samantha Davidson and Madison Lee all finished through the second round, with Devereaux advancing to the third round, while Crystal Chen and Gillian Lawlor all advanced to the third round in sabre.

It's a wealth of experience, and everyone is playing out this year with a free year of eligibility. Last year was considered a complete season, but all NCAA athletes were granted a waiver for this year by the governing body, meaning the team can keep its core in place if student-athletes choose to spend a fifth year at Boston College.

"This is a phenomenal squad," Doris-Pierce said. "I honestly could not be prouder of the way they've taken care of each other, and the responsibility they've taken isn't just for their own heath as much as it's for each other's health. They've been diligent about testing and avoiding situations to minimize exposure (to COVID-19) as much as possible. They have made significant sacrifices to keep this season up and running. I wish I could take credit for it, but it's the character of this team and the character of the kids that make up this team."

BC opens up its schedule on Saturday against St. John's with a dual meet at the Taffner Field House in Queens, New York.