Women's Fencing Rallies To Beat Yale

Saturday, January 31

1 p.m.

Sacred Heart

W, 15-12

at Yale

1/31/2015 12:00:00 AM | Women's Fencing

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The Sacred Heart women's fencing team travelled to New Haven on Saturday for its annual contest with Yale. Led by an epee squad rally, the Pioneers beat the Bulldogs 15-12.

In the first round, epee went 3-0 and foil and saber added a win each to get the Pioneers a 5-4 lead. A similar result in the second round left the Pioneers ahead by a 10-8 margin. A strong performance by Yale foil in the last round gave the lead to Yale at 11-10. Yale stretched their lead at 12-11 by winning the first saber bout of the stanza. This meant that SHU would need to get four of the last five bouts to seal the win. Convincing wins by Taylor Walsh and Julia Greene in saber tied the match again at 12 all. The Pioneer epee squad continued their dominance by winning the last three bouts of the day by 5-0, 5-2 and 5-0 scores to seal the 15-12 victory.

The Pioneers were led on the day by 3-0 performances from Megan Floyd, Mia Volpe and Caitlin Stanton in epee and Julia Greene in saber. CJ McCarter also made a huge contribution with two critical foil wins.

"This was such a satisfying win for us today", comments head coach Dr. Tom Vrabel. "My former college coach Branimir Zivkovic always said that if you can get nine wins from three of your starters you can pick up five wins anywhere. Picking up 12 wins from four 3-0 performances was critical to our success today. Our epee squad was totally dominant today. I think that they were only behind in one bout all day. Floyd, Volpe, and Stanton all fenced up to their potential and the results speak for themselves. It was nice to see how Julia Greene bounced back from her performance Philadelphia last weekend. She put in a lot of work last week fixing a few critical technique issues and it really paid off. CJ McCarter just fights as hard as anyone that we have had fence at Sacred Heart. She was one touch away from a sweep today as well. This win puts us in a nice position as we prepare for the final NFC matches of the season next Saturday."

The Pioneers are back in action on Saturday, February 7 at Dartmouth where they will be going for their sixth consecutive NFC Conference Title. Action will begin at 10 AM.