Irish find success, failure on road
By MIKE CONNOLLY
Sports Writer
Two very different fencing teams came back from New York late Sunday night.
The men's team returned victorious, buoyed by four wins against top competition — including championship favorite St. John's.
"I think this team can go undefeated this season," head fencing coach Yves Auriol said after Notre Dame's 15-12 win against St. John's, 16-11 win against Columbia and a pair of 18-9 wins against NYU and Yale.
The women's team, however, knows it has a long road of improvement to travel if they want to be national title contenders in March. The women dropped three of their four meets over the weekend including an 18-9 loss to St. John's, 15-12 to Yale and 17-10 to Columbia. The women's lone victory came over NYU 23-4.
"We are not as deep with the women as we are with the men," Auriol said. "We have a couple fencers from the women's side who are not fencing at their best right now. We are going to improve on the women's side but we won't be as good as we were in the past three or four years."
Although the women return five of six qualifiers from the 2000 NCAAs, the hole left by the graduation of four-time All-American Magda Krol has yet to be filled.
"Magda was really the one who could fence with the best," Auriol said.
All-American Liza Boutsikaris has stepped into Krol's role as foil captain and posted an 8-4 record over the weekend. The sophomore, however, has yet to fill the leadership void left by Krol and is still learning on the job.
"It is kind of difficult only being my sophomore year," Boutsikaris said. "I am sure there are people on my team who know what to do better than I do. I just try to copy off Magda and use her for my roll model. She was a great, great captain so I just try to model myself after her."
Boutsikaris' foil squad had its tough match against Columbia as the Irish dropped all nine bouts. Columbia's foil squad is perhaps the best in the nation and features Olympian Erin Smart. Smart defeated Boutsikaris 5-3 in the first meeting between the two.
"It was my first time fencing her but I think I gave her a tough time," Boutsikaris said.
The women's epee squad managed to perform only slightly better than the foil squad. With No. 1 starter Anna Carnick hobbled by an injury and expected-star Kerry Walton ineligible, the Irish stumbled to a 2-2 record on the weekend with wins against NYU and Yale and losses to St. John's and Columbia.
"Anna Carnick was a little bit injured so she is not back to her potential yet," Auriol said. "She was our top girl in epee. We also lost Kerry Walton and she was going to be our No. 1 women's epee fencer. That is going to hurt us for the rest of the season."
Meagan Call's 7-4 record was the lone bright spot for the women's epee squad.
The women's sabre team picked up two dominating wins but also dropped two key matches. Freshmen Destanie Milo and Jessie Filkins posted 7-3 and 7-1 records respectively as the Irish beat NYU 9-0 and Columbia 8-1 but fell 7-2 and 6-3 to St. John's and Yale, respectively.
"We are young in sabre but they are good," Auriol said. "The two freshmen are going to help right away and it showed last weekend. The women's sabre team is the best squad by far. That might help the rest of the team pull it off the rest of the season."
The men's team quickly reestablished themselves as the best men's squad in the country after thoroughly dominating NCAAs last year and sweeping the competition this weekend.
As usual, the Irish were led by sabre squad. All-Americans Andrejz Bednarski and Gabor Szelle and sabre captain Andre Crompton led the Irish to a 6-3 win against the Red Storm.
St. John's was Notre Dame's main competition for the title of best sabre team in the U.S. before the weekend. Although Notre Dame took home the victory, the battle is far from over. St. John's was missing its best fencer this weekend, 1999 National Champion and Olympian Keeth Smart.
Auriol feels, however, that the Irish will still reign supreme in the rematch at NCAAs.
"Even with Keeth Smart, we would have won the match in sabre," he said. "[The Irish sabremen] were fencing very tough."
Sophomore Matt Fabricant rotated with the other sabremen and posted an undefeated 9-0 record.
"The sabre team is by far in my opinion the best squad in the country," Auriol said.
Sophomore Ozren Debic, who was nearly the best in the country last year as he finished second at the NCAAs, finished the weekend with an 11-1 against stiff competition.
His only loss came against Kevin Erikson of Columbia but Debic blamed his only blemish on heartburn and not lesser skill.
"That loss was all lunch," Debic said.
The sophomore foil captain said he was lethargic in his final match of the day. After facing the best teams in Yale and St. John's before lunch, Debic didn't try his hardest against Columbia. Although Debic jumped out to a 3-0 lead, he let Erikson come back to win the match 5-4.
"That was a lesson to me ... not to think that I was done because I will have to fence the good guys at NCAA in the final matches," Debic said.
The surprise hero of the foil squad was junior Steve Mautone. Despite finishing with a disappointing 2-7 record, Mautone picked up his two wins against the Red Storm in the biggest match of the day. Mautone's 2-1 record against St. John's helped the Irish eke out a 5-4 win.
"Steve basically pulled us up," Debic said. "[Irish starter] Forrest [Walton who lost all three bouts against St. John's] didn't fence very well. I don't know if it was stress or something because we were fencing St. John's. But Steve went out and won two bouts and nobody expected that."
Sophomore All-American Jan Viviani paced the epee squad with a 9-1 record including a 2-1 record against St. John's.
All Sports Stories for Tuesday, January 23, 2001
