WELLESLEY, Mass. – The Brandeis University fencing team started its 2023 championship season at the New England Intercollegiate Fencing Conference Championships on Saturday at Wellesley College.

TOP PERFORMANCES

• The best performance of the day came from the men's foil squad, who placed third in the team competition. The trio of first-year Sam Choun (Hoover, Ala./Altamont School), sophomore Quin Smith (Ashland, Va./Patrick Henry) and junior Luke Ritchie (Baltimore, Md./St. Paul's School) secured 30 wins among them, just one behind Northeastern and five behind Brown. The Judges tied with MIT and Vassar, but won out on bronze with a +87 indicator, six better than MIT and 20 ahead of the Brewers. Their only head-to-head losses came to Brown, Stonybrook and Vassar.
• Choun and Ritchie finished sixth and seventh, respectively, in the individual standings.
• The sabre squads each finished in fourth place for the Judges.
• The men's sabre squad featured first-year Seth Edelman (New York, N.Y. / Brooklyn Tech), senior Gabe Lobo-Berg (Brooklyn, N.Y./Poly Prep CDS) and sophomore Joy Qiu (Guangzhou City, China / Roselle Catholic (N.J.). They tallied 30 points, suffering losses only first-place MIT and second-place Sacred Heart. The Judges were just two wins behind the Pioneers and third-place Brown.
• The women's sabre squad saw first-year Kat Xikes (Chatham, N.J./Chatham) and sophomore Kayla Turnoff (Westfield, N.J./Kent Place School) joined by sophomore Calla Lee (Duluth, Ga./Lambert), an epee fencer this season. They put together 40 wins and were edged on indicator for the bronze by Sacred Heart, +114 to +99. The Judges' only team losses came to Brown and MIT, who finished first and second in the team standings.
• In individual sabre action, Lobo-Berg and Xikes each finished in fifth place, while Turnof placed ninth.
• Other team finishes for the Judges included a fifth-place for women's foil, seventh for women's epee and 10^th for men's epee. The women's foil performance was especially impressive given that the Judges had just two representatives, first-years Hannah Du (Winchester, Mass./Winchester) and Rhea Menon (Princeton, N.J./West Windsor Plainsboro). Du finished seventh in the individual standings.

UP NEXT

• The Brandeis women head to Drew University for the Northeast Intercollegiate Women's Fencing Association on March 4, while both teams head to Harvard for the NCAA Northeastern Regionals on Sunday, March 12.