Head coach Irv DeKoff had high expectations heading into the 1953-54 campaign. And why wouldn't he? The Lions brought back 11 seniors from a squad that finished the previous year 10-2 in dual meets, so there was plenty of reason for optimism.
Leading the charge were returning All-Americans Stephen Sobel (sabre) and Irwin Bernstein (epee). Columbia also boasted strong depth in the sabre in Ted Reuter, Henry Weinstein, future Columbia Athletics Hall of Famer, Barry Pariser, and Harvey Turner.
The Lions opened the season with a flourish, topping their first three opponents by a combined score of 63-18, including a 21-6 triumph over Ancient Eight rival Penn. Columbia continued to rattle off convincing victories and had its sights set on the program's first undefeated season.
Columbia's toughest regular season test came against Cornell, but the Lions were able to hold off the Big Red, 14-13. They took their perfect 11-0 record into the Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships after an 18-9 victory over Navy to wrap up dual-meet season.
At IFA's, Columbia rolled to the three-weapon championship, the first for the program since 1926, winning the event by 12 points. Sobel, Pariser and Reueter swept the medal stand in sabre as the Lions won each of the individual weapon portions of the competition.
The Lions finished day one of NCAA's tied for first with Cornell. However, they had a subpar performance to their standards, the following day, and DeKoff was unsure of the results until the very end of the meet.
“Only at the end, when I asked Hugo Castello, NYU's coach, how many points he had did I find out where we were,” DeKoff wrote in the April 1954 edition of Lions on Lions. “He said 61. I replied that I had that too, so we concluded we tied for the title.”
