Hall of Fame
No Columbia team has been as consistently successful over the years as the fencers, but the 1950-51 squad was special, even by Columbia fencing standards.
The Lions, who had a 5-8 record a year earlier, started the season with seven victories, but second-year Coach Joe Velarde, writing in Lines on Lions, the athletic department newsletter, warned alumni not to get too carried away because the toughest part of the schedule was ahead.
And Velarde was right. The Lions did beat Harvard and arch-rival NYU, but dropped close matches to Navy and Penn. But that was just the warm-up for the post-season and there the Lions were unbeatable, capturing seven Eastern Intercollegiate Fencing Association and NCAA championships, including the first NCAA team title ever won by Columba in any sport.
The team was led by senior captain Bob Nielsen, who posted an incredible 27-2 record in the regular season before repeating as NCAA and IFA foil champion. In his Columbia career, Nielsen won 105 of 112 bouts and was inducted into the university’s Athletics Hall of Fame in 2012.
But this was no one-man show, as junior Dan Chafetz was first in the NCAAs and second at the IFA in epee; junior Johnny Krajcir, who won the deciding bout in a regular-season 14-13 victory over Army, was second in sabre at both championships, junior Al Rubin took fourth in foil at the IFA, and sophomore Bob Schafer was fourth in sabre at the IFAs. Velarde also got strong efforts during the dual-match season from Jay Leibel in sabre and Gene Winograd and Jaromir Sevcik in epee.
“I think our success was due to the face that we had better physical condition than anyone else, and that we had tremendous spirit, drive and willingness to work all year,” Velarde said.
