Fighting For National Glory

Boston College's 2021 fencing season was always going to look a little bit different. The fingerprints of the COVID-19 shortened the season considerably from a yearlong marathon to a short sprint to the finish, and the long meets filled with individual bouts for the team's fencers instead transitioned to dual competitions featuring head-to-head results.

The shift altered the landscape of a sport that looked considerably different from its more normal yesteryears. Several high profile programs opted out entirely, including the Ivy League teams normally ranked among the nation's elite, which created a vacuum. It was unfortunate, but it produced an opportunity for any team willing to step to the front of the line.

The Eagles were one of those teams, and this weekend, a record number of Boston College fencers will hit the piste at the NCAA Championships hosted by Penn State.

"This is what they've been working and sacrificing for," head coach Brendan Doris-Pierce said. "The goal was to get through our competitive schedule, to be ready in order to take advantage of the opportunity we had this season. Now it's about embracing and enjoying the experience because they've done the hard work for (the next opportunity) to do the fight."

Eleven members of the program will compete in every discipline in both the men's and women's sides. For the women, Laura Boden and Lucy Hanson will fight in epee with Samantha Yeh in foil and Katarina Hone and Gillian Lawlor in sabre. The men, meanwhile, will feature Daniel Gaidar and Will Smith in epee with Bin Huang and Clayton Reid in foil, and Spencer Kuldell and Bolang Meng in sabre.

They advanced after rallying through a season with only three weekends of work against opponents. The schedule opened in February with a dual match against St. John's on the road, and the team rallied from only one victory - in its first round of the women's battle - to sweep Sacred Heart in both rounds of men's and women's two weeks later.

It was a dominant performance featuring a 6-0 individual performance from Spencer Kuldell. He swept his opponents in sabre while Reid and Brian Wang both went 4-2 in foil, and four female Eagles finished undefeated with both Lawlor and Yeh going 6-0 and Boden and Crystal Chen finishing one bout short of similar records.

"We don't get through this season with all of its irregularities if they aren't committed to pushing each other," Doris-Pierce said. "They had to make sure that everybody stayed healthy, first and foremost, before they ensured every athlete was fencing to their utmost ability. That takes a really high level of commitment to each other in addition to themselves."

It set a tone that carried BC into the ACC Championships at the end of February and lit a torch light directly into this weekend's national championship competitions. Fencers will compete in a round-robin format this weekend in a series of five-touch bouts. The top-four finishers will then advance to 15-touch bouts in the semifinals with winners advancing to determine the first and second place finishers. The fencers that do not advance will be awarded a tie for third place but will not compete in a consolation bout.

"We've been trying to simulate it as best as we can in practice in order to recreate the grind of the day," Doris-Pierce said. "It's a good mix among our classes, and they've all had several ACC individual rounds and several NCAA regional rounds in the Northeast, which is actually more bouts per day than the NCAA. So everyone's going to be prepared for what kind of day this is going to be."

All round robin victories are still worth one point towards a team's total, so the competition itself is a multi-day, physical marathon. The first three rounds of the men's competition kicks off early on Thursday with the epee before continuing through foil and sabre, and the fourth and fifth rounds follow a similar setup on Friday with the semifinals and championship all concluding in the afternoon.

The women follow suit over the weekend with a similar format as the five-touch bouts cycle fencers on and off the strip against fencers who all have different styles. It's an exceptionally grueling competition, but it's one that represents both a gilded opportunity as much as it does a chance at national glory.

"One of the things that we pride ourselves on is the number of different athletes we have from all over the country," Doris-Pierce said, "and that means we have a number of different fencing styles on our team. It makes us more competitive because nobody fences the same way. So you're never overly prepared for someone, but it means they're used to fencing so many different styles and can jump from one fencer to the next."

The NCAA Fencing Championships will kick off at 9 a.m. with live results updated on NCAA.com. The semifinal and final bouts will be available on ESPN3 or via the WatchESPN app on streaming devices. Those bouts will also be televised alongside championship highlights on delay on April 15 at 4 p.m on ESPNU.

Players Mentioned

Laura Boden

Crystal Chen

Daniel Gaidar

Lucy Hanson

Katarina Hone

Bin Huang

Spencer Kuldell

Gillian Lawlor

Bolang Meng

Clayton Reid

Will Smith

Brian Wang

Samantha Yeh

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