Saturday, Nov. 19, the varsity and JV fencing teams competed in the annual Catholic Memorial Invitational, with eight individuals placing in the top eight of their divisions.

The tournament, like all fencing competitions, was divided into pools by gender and three weapons: epée, sabre, and foil.

This invitational was the team’s third meet of the season but was the first for several fencers.

“This is the first time we take our JV team to a tournament so they can get some experience in a real competition,” said senior captain Isabel Greiner. 

“There is a wide range of experience at this tournament, from people who have never fenced in a real competition before, to people who have fenced on varsity for four years,” she said.

While rookies got their first taste of competition, varsity fencers used this invitational as an opportunity to identify their strengths and weaknesses at the start of the season.

“The most important goal going into this tournament is assessing where each individual fencer is,” said Greiner. “This is the tournament where each person can look for ways that they can improve themselves.”

Despite it being early in the season, head coach Colby Vargas said that all of the team’s fencers still performed very well.

“Our results were really good, especially considering we are only three weeks into practice,” he said.

The team’s most significant victories came from senior epée fencer Katie Shia and senior sabre fencer Matt Kim. Both Shia and Kim took 2nd place in their divisions. Each division was made up of at least 70 competitors.

The team was also proud of the efforts of their beginners. “A lot of rookie fencers did really well in the tournament,” said Shia. Freshman Aryoman Patel impressed by coming in 6th in men’s foil, a pool of almost 90 fencers.

While they were obviously well-equipped for their matches, the team tried to mentally prepare going into the competition. “We focused on staying calm under pressure, keeping our eyes and minds open and learning from the competition,” said Vargas.

Shia agreed, stressing the importance of strategy. “All of us already have the basic skills down, like parrying. It’s more tactical skills,” she said.

In addition to mental presence, the team knows that they have a lot of work to do to improve over the rest of the season. “We have good technique and form, and our conditioning is getting there, but we need to train against elite fencers who use more complex tactics,” said Vargas.

Shia highlighted the necessity of knowing the tendencies of specific teams prior to starting a match.

“Our main competitors are mostly Stevenson fencers, and they have very physically strong arms,” she said. “We’re working on avoiding combat fighting, but more just learning how to get out of their attacks.”

Greiner didn’t identify a specific goal for the team but instead explained the distinctions between individual fencers. “It’s hard to talk about team focus in future competitions because each person has individual strengths and weaknesses,” she said.

“However, we want to work on placing as many people as possible in the top eight and working hard to improve our teammates. So, when we reach Conference and State, we will be at our individual best ability and our team will place well overall,” she said.

Greiner and the rest of the team will next be competing in their first day of Conference on Saturday, Dec. 3 at New Trier’s Winnetka campus.