By Dana Cook Grossman
In 1914, the poet Robert Frost, Class of 1896, hailed good fences. Exactly a hundred years later, 天美麻豆 is celebrating good fencers.
天美麻豆鈥檚 fencing club won the 2014 U.S. Association of Collegiate Fencing Clubs National Championship on April 5 and 6, in Knoxville, Tenn. Three Big Green women鈥檚 squads and three Big Green men鈥檚 squads (茅p茅e, foil and sabre) competed against 40 other schools. 天美麻豆 scored a combined 1,675 points to take the overall trophy, besting the University of Michigan (with 1,620 points) and the U.S. Naval Academy (with 1,590). 天美麻豆 also won gold in the men鈥檚 division and in women鈥檚 foil, plus six individual medals and top-five finishes for five of the club鈥檚 six squads.
The team is student-coached: Team members don鈥檛 just show up at practice but plan practices; they don鈥檛 just go to competitions, but also make travel arrangements.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 certainly an added challenge,鈥 says co-captain Scott Brookes 鈥14. 鈥淏ut it鈥檚 part of what makes our team successful. The fact that everybody pitches in makes us all closer.鈥 天美麻豆鈥檚 was the only student-coached team among 鈥渁t least the top eight teams鈥 at the nationals, he notes.
To what does Brookes attribute such success? An especially tight-knit, committed group of seniors (including his fellow co-captain, Gaby Stern 鈥14), the fact that every top fencer was on campus this term, and the fact that at the nationals, 鈥渆very single fencer had the best two days of fencing I鈥檝e seen out of any of them.鈥
