Nov. 24, 2008

FAIRFIELD, CT - In a busy, action-filled weekend with matches at Harvard and University of New Hampshire, the Sacred Heart womens fencing team earned a split on Friday by losing to Harvard 23-4 but then recorded a 14-13 victory over Tufts. The Pioneers then defeated Wellesley, Boston University and UNH on Saturday.

Loses to MIT, Brown, and Brandeis on Saturday puts the Pioneers NCAA record at 4-5 and conference record at 3-3. Starring for Sacred Heart over the weekend were saberist and team captain Krista Bacci, who went 19-3, foil squad captain Jo Siskidis who was 18-6, and freshman standout epeeist Amanda Green who was 17-7.

The weekend started out on Friday evening with a match against perennial national power Harvard, which includes Beijing Olympic foil silver medalist Emily Cross and Israeli Beijing Olympian Noam Mills. Bacci's performance stood out, despite the loss, going 2-1. Wins were also achieved by junior Courtney Perlee in saber and sophomore Alli Ratis in epee.

"We fought hard against Harvard but we just do not yet have the depth and experience to challenge a team with this level of talent," commented head Coach Dr. Tom Vrabel. "We really appreciate the opportunity provided by Coach Brand to schedule SHU every year. It is a great thrill for our fencers to have the opportunity to compete with Olympic medalists such as Emily Cross."

In the nightcap, Sacred Heart needed wins from Bacci, Jo Siskidis and Green in the final three bouts of the match to secure a win against Tufts. "Despite needing to sweep the last three bouts to win, I felt good about our chances, knowing that Jo, Amanda and Krista would be fencing them for us," said Coach Vrabel. "In addition to being very skilled fencers, Krista, Jo and Amanda are very tough competitors that thrive in high pressure situations.

The Pioneers were back in action on Saturday Morning at UNH in Durham, NH, with the first league match of the season. They started out strong with wins over Wellesley and Boston University, then lost a tough 14-13 decision to MIT. They bounced back to defeat UNH but fell short in their last two matches against Brown and Brandeis.

"While it was tough to lose the MIT match, they are a very good team and we fought hard all day," said Vrabel. "This was the first time that we went through a day of league competition and won at least ten bouts in each match. Considering that we have two fencers that switched from epee to other weapons this season (Catie Sagevick to saber and Alex Stamateris to foil) I was very pleased with our results."

The saber and epee squads were very consistent over the eight matches and had overall records of 41-31 and 40-32. In addition to Bacci, Siskidis and Green's strong performances, Sagevick went 11-10 in saber and Ratis and Mary Dannegger went 10-8 and 8-8 in epee.

"This was the toughest weekend of the Conference Schedule for us," continued Vrabel. "Several of our fencers are very close to gaining the consistency of performance needed to join Krista, Jo and Amanda as dominant performers. Hopefully this will happen for us very soon."

The Pioneers close out competition for this semester with a Friday 7 PM evening match at Hunter College in Manhattan on Friday, December 5th.