NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP NOTES

• Fencers will compete in a round-robin format of five-touch bouts. After the round-robin, the top-four finishers in each weapon will fence in semifinal 15-touch bouts, with the winners fencing to determine first and second places, and the non-advancing fencers being awarded a tie for third place.
• An institution’s place finish in the championships will be based on points earned by each individual. A team will be awarded one point for each victory by its student-athletes during round robin bouts for the duration of the championships.
• Columbia won its third NCAA Championship by 11 points over Penn State and Notre Dame in 2015 at The Ohio State University.
• Of the 25 teams (144 competitors) competing at Brandeis this weekend:
  • 21 are Division I (131 fencers)
  • 2 are Division II (Cal.-San Diego, 4 fencers; and Wayne State, 3 fencers)
  • 2 are Division III (NYU, 5 fencers; and Lawrence, 1 fencer)
• Four teams have qualified the maximum 12 fencers: defending champions Columbia; Notre Dame (3^rd in 2015); Princeton (4^th in 2015); and St. John’s (6^th in 2015).
• Ohio State finished 5^th in 2015 and has 11 competitors (1 in W Sabre), while 2015 runner-up Penn State has 10 (0 Women’s foil).
• Five New England institutions will be represented at the 2016 Championships. Harvard leads the way with nine qualifiers, followed by Yale with four, Sacred Heart with three, Boston College with two and Brown with one.
• This is the fourth time Brandeis has hosted the NCAA Championships: in 1994 (Notre Dame won the championship; 1999 (Penn State); and 2004 (Ohio State).
• Brandeis is the first Division III school to host since 2007 (Drew University) and the first Northeast school since 2010 (Harvard).
• The field also contains the defending and former champions in three weapons: women's sabre Adrienne Jarocki (Harvard, 2014) and Francesca Russo (Notre Dame, 2015); men's epee Yevgeni Karyuchenko (St. John's, 2014) and Jake Hoyle (Columbia, 2015) and men's sabre Kaito Streets (Penn State, 2014) and Andrew Mackiewicz (Penn State, 2015).
• There are two Boston-area products in the field – Penn State sophomore sabre Andrew Mackiewicz of Westwood, and Princeton junior epee Alex House of Upton.
• Princeton foil squad boasts brothers Michael and Thomas Dudey, a junior and sophomore, respectively.
• Ohio State junior foil Eleanor Harvey hopes to qualify for the Rio Olympics for Team Canada.
• Notre Dame freshmen Alex Kiefer (men’s foil) and Sabrina Massialas (women’s foil) have relatives who own five NCAA Championships between them: Kiefer’s sister Lee won women’s foil titles from 2013-15 for the Fighting Irish, while Massialas’s brother Alex won 2013 and 2015 men’s foil titles for Stanford. Both Lee Kiefer and Alex Massialas are taking 2015-16 off from NCAA fencing to focus on the Rio Olympics.