These victories meant that, for the second year in a row, the
season-ending meet against Columbia would be for the Ivy League
pennant. And for the second year in a row, the Lions fully asserted
themselves, showing why they were the reigning Ivy League, Easterns and
NCAA champions with a 17-10 victory in which they were superior at
every weapon, handed Hicks and White their first league losses of the
season and won the Ivy League title for the fifth consecutive year.
1964 NCAA CHAMPIONS
Perhaps still reeling from this resounding setback, the Tigers, who
were expected to place in the top four or five in the Easterns at
Annapolis, faded to seventh, behind two teams (Penn and Rutgers) whom
they had defeated during the regular season. Their performance was so
disappointing that it left the team “defeated and demoralized,”
according to Daily Princetonian columnist Thomas Reid, and caused Coach
Stanley Sieja to seriously consider not allowing his team to compete in
the NCAA Championships, which Harvard would be hosting. He scheduled a
midweek meeting with Princeton’s Athletics Director Kenneth Fairman,
who persuaded him to go to Cambridge after all, with the hope, as he
later admitted, “that we could win third or fourth place.”
Certainly neither the veteran coach nor anyone else could have foreseen
what lay ahead or the incredible accomplishment that the fencers he
selected --- namely Hicks (foil), White (epee) and O’Sullivan (saber),
the same trio that had finished fifth at the NCAA’s one year earlier in
Colorado --- would achieve. Led by Hicks, who won 32 of his 33 bouts to
finish first in the foil bracket (three wins ahead of the
pre-tournament favorite Marvin Garavoy of NYU), and ably supported by
White (25-9, good enough to place third) and O’Sullivan (24-11),
Princeton scored a total of 81 points, two ahead of second-place NYU to
capture Princeton’s first NCAA crown in any sport in the 24 years since
Princeton’s golf team had done so in 1940 (and the last until
Princeton’s men’s lacrosse team emulated this feat 28 years later in
1992), as well as its first NCAA fencing title ever. There was a 15-20
minute gap between when the last match ended and the official
determination of which team had won, during which the NCAA
administrators totaled up all the match results. When it was finally
officially announced that Princeton had won, Hicks, in a combination of
shock and excitement, jumped so violently into the air that both his
calf muscles cramped up. His victory total was the highest of any of
the 105 participants representing 38 different schools, and his
performance was so impressive that he received the NCAA’s Fencer of the
Year Award at the tournament’s conclusion.
Princeton’s run to the championship, especially on the second day of
the two-day event, confounded the experts. The Tigers were in a
four-way tie for fourth at the end of Friday's matches, three points
behind first-place Navy. On Saturday, however, rather than allowing
themselves to be overpowered by the more experienced fencers from Navy
and the New York schools, they instead upset both tradition and
the pre-meet favorites to sweep into the lead and retain it right to
the end. When asked to explain this outcome, Coach Sieja detailed four
separate factors, citing his fencers’ ability to duel against the many
different styles they faced, the experience his threesome had gained
from having all competed in the 1963 NCAA tournament, the absence of
any pressure since they weren’t expected to do very well in their
respective weapons, and, most importantly, the team’s outstanding
physical condition. He had given his fencers extra work in the lead-up
to the tournament --- including repeated laps, running backwards,
around Dillon Gymnasium --- to prepare them for the grueling two-day
grind, and it really paid tremendous dividends. “In the closing bouts
Saturday night, we had the strength and stamina to be at our peak,
while the boys from the other teams were wilting,” he explained.
Hicks and White were both named first-team All-Americans. Neither had
fenced prior to entering Princeton. While Hicks had played a number of
the conventional sports in high school, he only started fencing because
Coach Sieja spotted him in a freshman gym class and invited him to try
out for the freshman team. Every freshman had to choose a sport for the
winter gym class, and Hicks had to choose between wrestling, ice
skating and fencing. Caprice played as much of a role as anything else
in Hicks’s decision, since Dillon Gymnasium was located right around
the corner from Hicks’s dorm, whereas the hockey rink was on the other
end of campus. Coach Sieja had steered him into foil, which suited his
attack-oriented style, whose effectiveness was enhanced by his being
left-handed.
Hicks had been hampered by an infection in the big toe of his left foot
during the Easterns event, but the injury fully healed prior to the
NCAA’s. He got on more and more of a roll as the two-day NCAA event
progressed, aided as well by a previous practice session he had had
with Polish fencing star Egon Francke, who would win an Olympic gold
medal in the individual foil competition at the Summer Olympics in
Tokyo later that year. In addition to the experience he gained from his
time on the strip with such an exceptional fencer, Hicks came away from
the session with some tangible rewards as well when Francke gave him a
pair of shoes that were specifically designed for fencing --- with
soles wrapped around one side of the shoe and with gel-padded heels, a
major upgrade from the Converse All-Star sneakers that Hicks had always
worn --- and a metallic jacket wrapped much tighter to the body than
Hicks had ever previously worn. This latter garment presented a smaller
target to Hicks’s opponents: indeed, during the tournament one of the
opposing coaches lodged a challenge about the jacket that was resolved
in Hicks’s favor. There was an uplifting psychological component to
wearing such fencing-specific clothing in addition to the tangible
benefits they conferred.
THE FINGER LAKES ATHLETIC CLUB
Hicks and his two triumphant teammates had dinner in Cambridge with
Coach Sieja and Cornell’s head coach Raoul Sudre, who asked what plans
the seniors Hicks and White had made for after their graduation. When
Hicks responded that he had applied to several law schools. Including
Cornell’s, Sudre told him, “Don’t commit to any of the other law
schools until you hear from us.” By early the following Tuesday morning
--- barely 60 hours later --- Hicks received a telegram notifying him
of his acceptance at Cornell Law School! Especially during the first
two of his three years in Ithaca, he regularly attended Cornell’s
fencing team’s practice and worked out with the team members,
effectively (albeit unofficially) playing the role of a volunteer
assistant coach. Frank Anger was still doing graduate work at Cornell,
as was former Olympic gold-medalist saber fencer Gene Hamori, who had
defected from Hungary. The three of them nicknamed themselves The
Finger Lakes Athletic Club and frequently traveled together to compete
in fencing tournaments in Toronto, Boston, Cleveland and New York.
The extremely celebratory season-ending team banquet in late April 1964
was highlighted by the awarding of the NCAA Fencing Trophy and by the
praise that was heaped upon the team by Assistant Athletics Director
Martin McKay, Coach Sieja and several Princeton fencing alumni. White
received the Princeton fencing medal for the third straight year,
making him the first three-time recipient of this award in Princeton
fencing history, and Whiteside was given the Johnston Award “for
perseverance, self-control and modesty.” In addition, a special award
was presented to each member of the varsity squad by Paul Levy, Chair
of the Friends of Princeton Fencing, representing the alumni. Levy said
that these awards were being given to represent the gratitude of all
former Princeton fencers for the national championship.
NOW OR NEVER
By the time the 2009-10 season rolled around, all those promising
freshmen three years earlier --- Abend, Boswell, Flanders, Ed Hurme and
Liss for the men and Clay, Petsche, Gong and Lauren Clark for the women
--- had become seniors. Their time to make good on the vows that
several of especially the men recruits had made about winning an Ivy
League championship was now or never. Abend had said back then that by
their senior year they might well win the entire NCAA’s, not just the
Ivy League, and enough of his fellow freshmen had made similarly
confident predictions that Alejandro Bras, the a co-captain that year,
had felt the need to bring the precocious youngsters in line, noting,
“At least the freshmen make up in confidence what they obviously lack
in experience and skill.” Both Princeton’s men’s and women’s fencing
teams had lost at least two dual meets against Ivy League opponents in
each of the past three seasons.
Neither of them would lose a single Ivy League dual meet in 2009-10,
however. The Princeton women, their ranks substantially bolstered by no
fewer than five strong freshmen --- namely Phoebe Caldwell, Joanna
Cichomski, Brianna Martin, Hannah Safford (Scanlan’s teammate on the
U.S. 2009 bronze-medal Junior Olympics squad) and Eliza Stone --- were
fully ready to fulfill the optimistic prediction that their outgoing
co-captain Bhinder had voiced, while the men’s team was significantly
strengthened by the arrival of freshmen Ed Kelley, Robert Malcolm and
Jonathan Yergler. Although Yergler had grown up in Orlando, his parents
had made the two-hour drive down Highway I-95 multiple times per week
so that he could have lessons with Mario Jelev, the fencing coach at
the South Florida Fencing Club in Fort Lauderdale whose reputation was
so exemplary that his Twitter hashtag was FencingGuru.
THE HYDRA
The men’s epee unit that year --- composed of Wicas, Elfassy,
Edward Hurme, former national Cadet champions Gegan and Sulat and the
freshmen Kelley and Yergler --- had become so strong and so deep that
it became known as “The Hydra,” a reference to the many-headed serpent
in Greek mythology that, whenever one of its heads was cut off, was
able to generate two heads to replace it. Knowing how formidable his
teams had become, Coach Dudas built the most challenging schedule he
could muster, both to toughen up his fencers for the Ivy League matches
and because he knew that strength of schedule is taken into account
when the NCAA Committee determines its bids. Eager to prove themselves
to their returning letter-winner teammates, the freshmen hit the ground
running in the season-opening Penn State Invitational, where Yergler
(epee) and Malcolm (foil) both placed second and Martin (fifth in foil)
and Safford (eighth in epee) both recorded top-10 placements as well.
Then, at the seven-team inaugural Harvard Invitational one week later,
Princeton’s freshmen played the lead roles as well when Cichomski and
Stone co-led the Tigers with 15-3 records and Kelley’s 12-3 slate was
best among the men. Neither Kelley nor Yergler had been in the starting
lineup at the outset of the tournament, but both were inserted fairly
early on, and when each performed admirably in the first team event of
the season (the Penn State Invitational was only an individual event),
they thereby earned their stripes and became regulars from that point
onwards.
Both Princeton teams handily beat North Carolina, Sacred Heart, Vassar
and NYU, both lost to the reigning NCAA champion Penn State (although
the men’s score was 14-13) and both had close matches with Harvard,
whose women’s team went undefeated for the weekend, including a 14-13
win over Penn State, while Princeton’s men edged the Crimson 15-12 when
Kelley and Mills came through in the last two matches. Although the
Princeton women did not get the result they had hoped for after
battling the Crimson, their spirits were still high. “Our foil and epee
teams actually beat Harvard in the bout,” Clay said. “The saber team
lost because we didn’t have three of our starters two of whom were at
the World Cup in Germany and one of whom had mono. Keeping that in
mind, we’re not in a bad position. It really was a pretty good day
overall. The freshmen got a lot of good experience, and we came away
with wins.”
When the schedule resumed two months later, Princeton's fencing teams
picked up victories over four fellow top-10 teams among 21 wins over
the weekend at the two-day Northwestern Duals event in Evanston,
Illinois, one of the tournaments that Coach Dudas had made it a
priority to have Princeton enter ahead of the Ivy League competition
due to what a strong field it always attracted. The Princeton men lived
up to their No. 4 national ranking by beating No. 10 Duke and winning
nine of their 11 dual meets, losing only to No. 2 Notre Dame and No. 3
Ohio State, while the Princeton women defeated Northwestern, Ohio State
and Temple (the Nos. 5, 6 and 7 ranked teams) en route to a 14-1
overall record whose only blot was a loss to No. 2 Notre Dame. A few
weeks earlier, Yergler had triumphed in the Under-20 epee portion of
the North American Cup and Safford placed second in Under-20 women’s
epee. In the Division I competition, Wicas (fifth) and Kelley (10th)
both had top-10 placements and Scanlan finished 18th in the event,
which was won by Princeton alumna Lindsay Campbell.
“I think the performances of our fencers set a good tone for the
rest of the season,” Scanlan said. Alluding to the fact that the event
took place right in the middle of exams, Scanlan added that flying
halfway across the country during the most stressful time of the year
academically “speaks to the dedication of the athletes on this team.
Some of our fencers even took exams online before or after they
competed.” At the Junior Olympics in Memphis just prior to the two Ivy
weekends, Stone won the women’s saber event (in a field of 111
entrants), Safford tied for third in women’s epee and Kelley took
eighth place in men’s epee. “We now have about five or six kids in the
top 10 of the national rankings,” a delighted Coach Dudas said. “The
whole team is now looking forward to the Ivy tournaments coming up in
the next two weekends. Fortunately, it looks like we don’t have any
major injuries, so most likely everybody will be able to fence. We have
a very high spirit and good season behind us.”
They had a great season ahead of them as well, although, after opening
up with a pair of routine wins over Penn and Brown in the Ivy North
weekend at Cornell, the Princeton men’s team was pushed to the brink by
Yale before eking out a 14-13 victory by winning the last three bouts
--- first Yergler 5-3 over Nck Wan, then Mills 5-0 over Jon Holbrook,
and finally Wicas 5-1 over Alex Cohen --- after trailing 13-11.
Princeton’s 7-2 epee advantage --- in which Wicas won all three bouts
(including, as noted, the 13-all clincher) and Yergler and Kelley were
both 2-1 --- spelled the difference, and sophomore foilsmen David
Mandle and Mills contributed two points each as well. Mills, whose win
gave the Tigers their 12th point, thereby keeping Princeton’s hopes
alive and setting the stage for Yergler and Wicas, remembers how much
pressure he felt standing on the strip before his bout began, and how
much better he felt when his teammate Elfassy walked over to him and
said, “You are the best foil fencer in the room --- just go out there
and beat this guy.”
Mandle, a walk-on from California who had been taught by 1992 team gold
medalist George Pogosov at the Cardinal Fencing Club at Stanford
University (where Pogosov currently is the co-head coach), had perhaps
his best season in 2009-10, for which he credited foils coach Szilvia
Voros for making him more patient and curbing his tendency to
constantly rush his opponent. The closing stretch of the men’s dual
meet against Yale was, in the words of Yergler, ”incredibly exciting.
Abend and the rest of the seniors had been striving for an Ivy League
championship for their whole college careers, they knew that the Yale
match was the crossroads, and the energy that they and the other
upperclassmen generated affected all of us. Everyone was so invested
and supporting every one of their teammates with so much passion.”
The Tiger women defeated the Quakers 19-8, with a remarkable turnaround
after initially trailing 6-2 and then went on to crush Brown 21-6 and
finish off the Bulldogs 17-10. Martin (8-0) and Jarry (6-0) played
major roles in Princeton’s 22-5 overall record in foil, and Caldwell,
Scanlan and Safford between them won 22 epee bouts. Stone had five of
the saber team’s 13 wins throughout the day, and sophomore Bianca
Cabrera and Cichomski each added four. Coach Dudas said he had faith in
the team’s performance for the Ivy South weekend that lay ahead at Penn
because of each squad’s ability to regroup and stay strong until the
end of each match to pull out its victories. “When you can stand up and
regroup from a position, this gives you more strength for future
matches,” Dudas said. “Every squad did a performance at the moment we
needed it most.”
“IT’S ALL IN YOUR HANDS NOW”
Since the Columbia women had also rolled undefeated through the Ivy
North weekend, it was clear that the Princeton vs. Columbia women’s
match would be for the 2010 Ivy League crown. The Lions had 6-3 records
in both epee and saber, but the Princeton foils trio of Jarry,
Rothenberg and Martin --- two sophomores and a freshman --- won all
nine of their bouts to give Princeton a 15-12 victory. Then, after
thrashing Cornell 20-7, the Tigers edged Harvard 14-13 when
Cichomski and Oliva (again both underclassmen) won the final two bouts
of the day. Oliva, who had not been scheduled to fence in the meet, had
therefore removed her equipment and was clad only in warm-up pants and
jacket over her undergarments.
She was informed on such short (less than five minutes’) notice by
Coach Voros that she would be fencing the last foil bout in place of
the slightly-injured Jarry that she did not have time to run to the
locker room --- so she had to hurriedly pull off her warm-ups, put her
equipment on (over what she described as “very much not-sports-ready
underclothes”) in a corner of the massive arena while some of her
taller teammates created a sort of wall to shield her, and rush over to
her strip. Just as she arrived, Cichomski completed her victory that
tied the team score at 13-all, giving Sulat just enough time to post a
tweet declaring, “It’s all in your hands now, little one.” Oliva, an
excellent counter-attacker, used that trait to get herself an early
lead against Anna Pet, her Harvard opponent,, then scored the fifth
touch on a fast “sweep attack” that landed solidly on Pet’s right
shoulder. Rothenberg, upon seeing from her vantage point beside the
strip that it was a clean touch even before the referee made the
official ruling, was the first teammate to reach Oliva, who was then
hoisted aloft by her jubilant teammates. One year earlier the Princeton
women’s 14-13 loss to Harvard had cost them a share of the Ivy League
pennant, whereas this time a 14-13 win over the Crimson had clinched
the Ivy League and secured an undefeated Ivy season.
Although Oliva’s father, who worked in Penn’s marketing department (“I
practically grew up in University City,” Oliva recalled, referring to
the neighborhood in and around Penn’s campus), would under any other
circumstance have been able to witness his daughter’s career-highlight
moment, he instead spent that weekend in a Philadelphia hospital, where
he was diagnosed with a severe form of cancer. He never left and died
just four months later in early July. The last time Oliva saw her
father in the hospital, she gave him the Ivy League championship ring
that had been given out a few weeks earlier to every member of the 2010
Princeton women’s team.
A SATISFYING EXCLAMATION POINT
The Princeton men, having, as noted, dodged a bullet one week earlier
against Yale, this time left nothing to chance with decisive wins over
both Columbia --- 23-4, highlighted by Abend’s victory over Columbia
star (and 2012 Olympian) Jeff Spear, which Abend later fondly recalled
as “a satisfying exclamation point on a lopsided win over a team that
the Princeton men hadn't beaten in my previous three years” --- and
Harvard (18-9). In addition to triumphing in all their dual meets, the
Tigers also took more All-Ivy honors than any other school, with six
fencers --- Mills, Yergler, Wicas (who then won the Regionals
Individual Epee crown after placing third as a freshman and second as a
sophomore), Martin (whose 15 wins during the Ivies weekend was tops for
any fencer of either gender), Jarry and Scanlan --- earning first-team
honors.
Steven Liss, who earlier in the Harvard meet had won his foil bout,
took a wonderfully revealing pair of photographs just seconds apart ---
the first showing the tension on his teammates’ faces as freshman
Robbie Malcolm got within a single point of winning the
pennant-clinching bout against his Harvard opponent, and the second
capturing the joy on their faces right after Malcolm secured the
winning touch. Like virtually everyone from that 2009-10 team who was
interviewed for this publication, Liss’s foremost (and fondest) memory
when he was asked to relive that season was the degree to which that
team was truly a team, how powerful and bonding the camaraderie and
chemistry was throughout the roster, how supportively everyone trained
together, how everyone competed hard against each other in practice but
how united and totally committed to team success everyone was during
the dual meets and team tournaments.
This feeling was especially strong among the five team members ---
co-captains Abend and Flanders, Paul Boswell, Edward Hurme and Liss
himself --- who were seniors, and who had been waiting and working for
four up-and-down years for this moment of culmination and triumph.
“Being out there on that strip and knowing that everyone on your team
was cheering for you was an incredibly powerful feeling, and one that I
will always remember and cherish,” Liss concluded. “Everyone sacrificed
a lot for the team --- 20 hours per week of our time at Princeton. We
put all that on the line for four years, which is what made that Ivy
League championship so meaningful for the 2010 seniors.”
Abend in particular had taken on the role of the team’s emotional
leader, always expressing certitude even during some of the
disappointments in earlier years that the team was not that far from
turning those defeats into victories and that its time would come if
everyone kept pushing forward with purpose and determination. He and
Stogin very often practiced together, and years later Stogin paid
tribute to Abend for what Stogin called “the optimism and courage that
he gave us. I was really happy when we were able to pull this off (i.e.
win the Ivies) for him after all the effort and desire that he had put
into Princeton fencing.”
