Columbia University
NCAA Northeast Regionals
After Strong NCAA Regional Showing, Eight Columbia Fencers to Head to NCAA Championships
3/14/2010 9:00:00 PM | Fencing
PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Eight Columbia fencers are primed to move on to the 2010 NCAA Championships after a good showing at the NCAA Northeast Regionals at Brown on Sunday.
Six Columbia women and two men will head to the NCAA Championships in Boston in two weeks and two Columbia women -- junior Nicole Ross and sophomore Neely Brandfield-Harvey -- won their respective weapons in convincing fashion.
"It was a good day," said George Kolombatovich, Columbia's Head Coach and Director of Fencing. "All in all, I'm very pleased. Eight of a possible twelve qualifiers is better than ninety percent of the field."
In reality, no team has qualified any fencers. The results of the Regionals are submitted to the NCAA Fencing Committee, which generally accepts the results from the nation's regionals. And while there have been instances where the committee's results differed from the anticipated field, it was not expected to happen on Tuesday's conference call, which finalizes the NCAA Championships field.
Ross (women's foil) and Brandfield-Harvey (women's epee) each won regional gold in their respective weapons on Sunday. It was the second time that Ross has captured a regional gold medal. She also won gold in 2008 and earned first team All-American honors as a first year at the NCAA Championships that year.
Brandfield-Harvey took home her first regional gold medal, taking top honors in the epee field, edging out Harvard's Noam Mills. Last year, Brandfield-Harvey made second team All-American as a first-year and will return to the NCAA Championships for the second straight year.
Also qualifying in women's foil was first-year D'Meca Homer, who finished sixth in the weapon. In women's epee, fellow newcomer Lydia Kopecky is set to head to the NCAA Championships after senior foilist Tess Finkel missed the competition due to illness.
Due to the NCAA's limit of two individual qualifiers per school per weapon, Columbia can only take two of its women's sabre fencers to the NCAA Championships. But the Lions had three of the top seven finishers in women's sabre -- junior Jackie Jacobson and sophomores Sammy Roberts and Stephanie Aiuto -- at the NCAA Regionals. Jacobson and Roberts will move on to the NCAAs in two weeks.
On the men's side, senior Jeff Spear was second in men's sabre, earning his third straight trip to the NCAA Championships.
Fellow senior Dwight Smith also qualified in men's epee. He also posted an impressive second-place performance for his third trip to the NCAAs.
The NCAA Regional Committee will put out its official list of qualifiers on Tuesday, March 16. Those qualifiers will compete in the 2010 NCAA Championships at Harvard in Boston, taking place from March 25-28.
Players Mentioned
