Last year's disappoinments step up to lead Irish
MATT LOZAR
Associate Sports Editor
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.
With all the pressure at the NCAA Championships to perform well for the team, one thing totally invaluable is a little something called experience.
For three Notre Dame fencers at this weekend's national championships, that experience factor meant all the difference in the world.
Senior Matt Fabricant qualified for his first NCAA Championships last year as a junior and finished 15th with a 9-14 record. Fabricant had that many wins after his first 10 bouts this year.
"[The experience] helped a lot, tremendously," Fabricant said. "Last year, I didn't know what to expect coming in. It helps a lot knowing exactly how many bouts you have to fence and the format."
As former All-Americans Andrzej Bednarski, Andre Crompton and Luke La Valle and current All-American teammate Gabor Szelle blocked his path to being one of the top two sabre fencers, Fabricant waited patiently and worked to become the All-American he is today.
"Matt Fabricant was waiting because we had so many good fencers," Notre Dame coach Janusz Bednarski said. "When he came, he worked hard, but they were a little ahead of him. He made a great jump here to help us."
After a disappointing third-place finish at the Midwest Fencing Conference Championships by the mens epee squad, Bednarski challenged sophomore Michal Sobieraj and said if he straightens himself out, he could win the national title.
Bednarski must have been right, because Sobieraj was first after the team bouts and dropped an 8-7 overtime match to Weston Kelsey in the epee championship to finish second in the country.
"I am still telling everybody he is one of the most talented fencers. He was very close to winning," Bednarski said. "We enjoyed his victories because he helped us win the gold medal in the team competition."
Sobieraj started his freshman year 26-1 but suffered a foot injury that caused him to miss five weeks of competition. He won the regional title before finishing a disappointing 10th at the NCAAs.
That letdown provided some motivation for this year, but like the rest of his team, Sobieraj put the team first.
"Last year I didn't fence very well because I had a foot injury and that didn't allow me to judge distances correctly," Sobieraj said. "First, it was for the team competition so I wanted to win as many bouts as I could for the team."
The third Irish fencer to recover from past substandard performances was junior sabre captain Destanie Milo. In her first two years, Milo failed to earn All-American honors but learned from those past experiences to compile a 16-7 record this weekend and become a second team All-American.
"This year everything just clicked for me. Mentally, I was on my game," Milo said. "The last two years, I was so nervous about NCAAs. This year I looked at it again as a team aspect.
"We are all going into this together. I am there for my teammates and they were going to be there for me."
The only way to not let history repeat itself is to learn from the past and over the weekend, these three Notre Dame fencers did just that.
All Sports Stories for Monday, March 24, 2003
