UPDATE: As of 4:30 PM, the NCAA has canceled all remaining NCAA winter and spring 2020 championships.
UPDATE: Because of withdrawals from the championship, first-year Ben Rogak of E. Setauket, New York, will be representing the men at the NCAA Championships as well. Rogak finished sixth in the men's epee competition at the Regionals last weekend, but was one of two alternates to the field. He will be Brandeis's first male at the NCAA Championships since Adam Mandel '15 and Noah Berman '15 in 2014. He's the first men's epeeist since Alex Powell '12 in 2011.
WALTHAM, Mass. – A pair of Brandeis University first-year women's sabre fencers, Jessica Morales of Wilmington, Massachusetts, and Maggie Shealy of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, will represent the Judges at the 2020 NCAA National Collegiate Fencing Championships in Detroit, Michigan, on March 19-22.
At this past weekend's NCAA Northeast Regional, Shealy and Morales finished sixth and seventh overall in the final standings. Both went 6-0 in the opening round, with Morales going 4-2 in the semifinals to earn the sixth seed into the final pool, and Shealy going 3-3 to earn the 11th of 12 spots. In the final pool, both fencers went 6-5, with Shealy posting a plus-one indicator – the differential between touches scored and touches received – with Morales finishing with a zero indicator. Shealy defeated her teammate, 5-4, likely helping clinch her berth at nationals.
During the regular season, Shealy led Brandeis with 69 victories in dual matches and was a three-time University Athletic Association Fencer of the Week. She was a first-team All-Northeast Fencing Conference selection.
Morales was second on the team with 63 dual-match wins and had just 19 losses for a team-best .875 winning percentage. She did not fence in enough NFC matches to earn All-Conference recognition, but was a five-time UAA Fencer of the Week. Morales, who competes for Colombia internationally, earned a bronze medal at the Junior Pan Am games in February, upsetting the top-ranked junior sabre fencer in the world in the process.
Morales and Shealy will be the first women to represent Brandeis at the NCAA Championships since Caroline Mattos '16 in 2014 did so in foil, and the first female sabre fencers since Anna Hanley '11 in 2009. It also marks the first time that multiple Brandeis women have qualified since 2002, when Tracy Marien '04 went in sabre and Jessica Lewis-Turner '04 went in epee.
The women will compete on the first two days of the NCAA Championships, Thursday, March 19 and Friday, March 20th.