CHS Fencers Collect Victories, Medals Over Holiday
Break
By Steven E. Brier
While the rest of us were out collecting presents, the Columbia High
School fencing team was out collecting wins, defeating Pingry 20-7 for boys
and 20-7 for girls, turning around the next night and defeating West Essex
19-8 for boys 23-4 for girls, took home 23 (out of 32) medals at that
weekend’s Freshman-Sophomore tournament and won the Santelli tournament this
past weekend for the third consecutive year.
Not bad for a holiday.
The hot streak started with a home meet against Pingry during the school
break.
“Chad Attenborough (sabre) won the opening bout against their sabre guy,
Greg Limoli,” volunteer coach Doc Paulina said. “He’s a tremendous fencer
and we knocked him off and were on a roll.”
Sarina Applegren on epee gave the girls team the magic 14th win of
the night clinching their side of the meet at 14-4 as did Russell Valle on
epee for the boys, also at 14-4.
The following night, the team traveled to West Essex, playing what
amounted to “same song, second verse,” knocking off the boys team 19-8 and
the girls team 23 bouts to four.
“They’re normally a top team but seem to be having a down year,” Paulina
said. “We started subbing out starters in the first round” continuing the
team’s policy of giving experience to everybody possible.
Magda Usarek-Witek on epee gave the girls team its 14th win of the night
at 14-3; David Llanes on sabre did the same for the boys at 14-5. Other
notables for the night were John Gay, a sophomore on sabre, who got his
first win. On the girls team, sophomore Claire Greenbaum on sabre and
freshman Sienna Batzli on epee notched their first varsity wins.
Coming off those two wins, the team’s freshmen and sophomores traveled
out to Morris Knolls High School, crowding on the buses before sunup. When
they returned after sundown, they brought with the 23 of the 32 medals
awarded at the tournament. Thirteen of the team’s 18 freshman and ten of the
14 sophomores medaled.
On the boys freshman team, Benjamin Prentice and Matthew Gibson came in
first and second in epee; Falcon Reese was first in foil and James Hurley
was third in sabre.
For the girls freshman team, Faizah Muhammad was first in sabre and
Briana McCalmon-Bailey was second in epee.
For the sophmore boys, Jackson Huemer was second in epee and Michael
Brenner was third in sabre.
On the sophomore girls side, Ricki Drattler came in first in foil; Jordon
Freels came in first in sabre and Clair Greenbaum, also sabre, came in
second.
Following on the heels of those victories came the Santelli tournament
for girls. Santelli, and this coming weekend’s Cetrulo tournament for boys,
are the largest one-day tournaments in the country, and the CHS teams like
to make a splash.
They did again this year, winning the Santelli for the third year in a
row.
The downside to being one of the best is that long after other fencers
have gone home to relax, the Columbia team is still on the strip. More than
nine hours after Santelli started, foilist Abby Capparos-Janto sealed the
team’s victory, the seventh time in the past nine years the team has won
Santelli.
The epee team placed first and the foil and sabre teams placed second.
