In a must-win situation Jeremy Kahn easily showed why he is one of the best fencers in the nation.
At the meet over the weekend against Penn State, Duke went into its last bout against New York University tied at 13 all. Kahn cooly stepped up to the strip and proceeded to give the men's team the victory with a 5-2 win in epee. Kahn, who admitted that he was not fencing at his best, did what was needed to give the Blue Devils a win.
"I won 5-2," Kahn said. "At one point it was 2-2. But then I wasn't fencing well on the day, except for that last bout, and I kind of turned it on a bit. From there, I scored two quick touches and pushed it to 4-2. I was really psyched up and they called a time out because they saw I was really psyched up. I ended up winning 5-2, so I got the touch anyway."
Beating NYU for the first time was exciting, but the way it happened was nothing new for the Blue Devils according to fellow epee fencer Brian Hartman.
"I was excited to beat NYU for the first time," Hartman said. "Jeremy had a big bout to do that. It came down to the last bout and Jeremy's done that before. He did the same thing last year."
The foil team gave Jeremy Kahn the chance to win by going 7-2 against NYU. Foil was led by Bob Manchen, who went 7-6 on the day.
For the meet, Duke went 3-1, with wins over Northwestern and Cleveland State and a 20-7 loss to fencing powerhouse and host Penn State. Duke, far from being in awe of Penn State, was simply not able to put it together for the win.
"We didn't feel that overwhelmed going in to it," Hartman said. "We've all fenced these guys before. We know these guys pretty well. They were a little bit sharper out there than we were and we couldn't quite get it done."
Duke's sabre, which is perhaps Penn State strongest division, was led by freshman Mike Baughman. Baughman, in his first bout, was able to defeat Brian Wather, who was the 1995 U.S. Junior Olympic champion in the sabre division. Baughman, who fenced for the first time this year, went 7-4 for the meet.
"It was my first trip, it was all pretty new," Baughman said. "I was a little nervous, because I was one of the few freshmen out there. It felt good to do well."
The women's team did not fair quite as well as the men, going 1-3 at the meet. The Blue Devils could have just as easily been 2-2 except for a tough loss against Northwestern. The foil division, led by Jennifer Brockett, went 11-5 but the epee division went 5-11.
Fencing, like most sports cannot end in a tie. In the event of a tie, touches for-which means how many times you touched your opponent- and touches against-how many times you were touched-are counted. These are called indicators. When the touches were all added up, Duke received the short end of the stick and lost by three indicator points.
The Blue Devils were able to beat Cleveland State, where the foil division led the way with a 14-2 showing. The women's team, like their male counterparts fell short against Penn State. The women were overmatched in losing 24-3 against the Nittany Lions.
Overall, the meet was a decent one for the Blue Devils as they look to continue to improve at Princeton this weekend. A week of practice will allow the Blue Devils to work on polishing up their parry-repost combinations.
"We pretty pleased about the 3-1, but we have some things we need to work on," Hartman said. "We were struggling with a couple parts of our game. We'll have some time to work on those."
Head coach Alex Beguinet agrees and believes that the Devils will improve for the weekend tournament.
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