Northwestern fencing coach Laurie Schiller once compared his sport’s NCAA Championships to deciding the men’s basketball title with a free throw contest.
If the tournament were conducted like a regular season dual meet, NU would have sent all nine of its starters to Palo Alto, Calif., site of this year’s championships.
But the NCAA allows teams to qualify a maximum of two fencers in each weapon (six overall) for the championships. The fencers compete individually, not as a team, and the total number of bouts won by the qualifiers from a school determines the team’s rank in the final standings.
Therefore the Wildcats’ 35-1 record and No. 2 ranking in the country — one that they held all season — made absolutely no difference at Stanford last Thursday and Friday, when five NU fencers battled for the championship.
Despite the format of the competition, the Cats finished sixth in the women’s field and ninth overall, without having a varsity men’s team. It was the school’s best-ever finish in the championships. Penn State claimed both the women’s and overall championship.
“We’re still the second best team in the country,” Schiller said. “We did damn well overall. I’m not unhappy with it.”
Three NU fencers — sabreists Vivian Imaizumi and Carly Wells, as well as épéeist Kate Rudkin — carried away All-American honors by finishing in the top 12 within their weapons. Before this year’s tournament, Michelle Schaffner had been the only female NU fencer to earn the distinction, doing so in 1998.
Schiller also has never had a top-six finisher in the NCAA Championship — until all three All-Americans finished in the top five.
And the other two fencers, épéeist Jen Greenebaum and foilist Kristen Dorf, finished 15th and 16th, missing All-American status by only a bout or two.
“It’s a whole new ballgame going into NCAAs,” Imaizumi said. “I would love to see team championships, but the NCAA doesn’t have them.”
Because of the format, the Cats couldn’t take advantage of their depth — NU beat St. John’s, Princeton and Notre Dame in the regular season but finished behind them at Stanford.
Still, NU wasn’t that far off from finishing in a better position. The five fencers won 69 bouts to finish sixth, but St. John’s won only 78 bouts to finish second.
“I’m pleased to have all of them finish in the top 16,” Schiller said. “When you’re up at that level, the breaks are going to go one way or the other.”
The absence of some of their teammates didn’t faze NU. The five fencers posted a combined regular season record of 425-79 in NCAA competition.
Imaizumi and Wells combined for 33 wins in 46 bouts at Stanford, individually earning the fourth and fifth spots in the sabre division. They equalled North Carolina for the most wins by any women’s sabre squad at the championships.
The duo also beat North Carolina fencers in three of four bouts. Imaizumi lost 15-14 to North Carolina star Kim Treiber in the sabre semifinals, missing by just one touch for a shot at MIT fencer Caroline Purcell, who eventually won the national championship.
With their fifth-place finishes in sabre and épée, Wells and Rudkin both missed the semifinals by only one spot. But Wells still has one year left to crack the top four and Rudkin — only a freshman — has three more years of likely domination ahead.
And if Schiller can come up with another recruit or two for next year, the Cats may be able to move up even higher in the NCAA Championships. He loses only Imaizumi from the five fencers who went to Palo Alto, and just one other, sabreist Jessica Brower, from the rest of the starting squad.
Schiller also has another 1.25 scholarships at his disposal, making the recruiting process easier. Even though his team has put up the greatest season in school history, he still sees the potential for even better teams in the near future.
“If we add one or two fencers for next year, that would make a difference and get us a lot closer,” Schiller said. “It’s a hard six months and I think we’ve done very, very well.”
