It shouldn’t be a surprise that the popularity of fencing has grown so quickly in WW-P. The students in both schools are well known for their spirit and school pride. The student sections at basketball and football games have frequently been filled by students wielding toy swords, emulating their school’s mascot, whether it be a Pirate or a Knight. ##M:[more]##
Now, with the addition of a fencing teamat each school, high school students have the chance to pick up a sword and use it against other high school students. That should explain the draw of fencing.
The newest WW-P sport has grew from a small club into two full teams after just one year. Gail Kedoin, an NCAA fencing champion and former U.S. fencing team member, helped to start the club two years ago, when there were only a handful of members in the club that included both North and South.
Kedoin is now the coach of a North team that has 36 members. survivors from a group of 76 who tried out. The sport is growing in popularity not just amongst participants but also with spectators. Naturally, the largest number of spectators turned out to see North clash with South in the Pirates cove on February 27. The South boys and the North girls won, both by the score of 15-12.
Fencing includes competitions in three different weapons, each of which are scored by a different set of rules. South coach George Michalik says the differences in the weapons are greater than one might imagine, presenting a unique challenge for a first year coach. He said: “It’s like having a soccer team, a volleyball team, and a football team all practicing at once. All three weapons are so different”
As are the athletes who use them. Fencers compete in only one weapon. Three compete in each category, and each fights up to three bouts in a match, which totals 27 bouts. The team that wins the most bouts wins the match.
Many of the athletes knew that much or less about the sport before becoming members of the team. The two coaches this year found a remarkable amount of interest, mostly from students who had never held a weapon before, let alone know which they would be best suited to compete with. “I decide it for them,” says Kedoin. “I spent a week or so practicing without weapons, just teaching them footwork, and playing games. I watch them and look for what they do to tell me different things about character, and based on that I decide where they’ll work best.”
North Girls
Kedoin says 80 percent of the students involved with the program when it was a club sport were from South, and all the practices were held there. She expected it would take four years to grow the program into a varsity sport, but the board of education approved it after just one trial season.
At that time, Kedoin, a West Windsor resident, chose to coach at North. She has two daughters who are expected to be Knights when they reach high school, and Kedoin said they are the reason she took the North program. It appears she’s in it for the long haul—her girls are in first and third grade.
It will be several years before either of them uses a foil, saber, or, if they follow in their mothers footsteps, an epee. Kedoin says some students start fencing as early as 12, but most of the current Knights team members started fencing in the last two years.
Christine Wilkinson is one of the few who had been trained before the schools started the fencing teams. As a senior, she has been a leader for the entire team (3-5) as well as for an epee squad that qualified for the district tournament. As an individual, Wilkinson is 16-3. She was a perfect 3-0 in the match against South, and her epee squad mates, sophomores Deesha Sarma and Komal Kumar, went 2-1.
The fact that the epee squad is the most accomplished of the three weapons at North may be attributed to the fact that it was Kedoin’s discipline when she competed. Kedoin was an NCAA champion at Penn, a gold medalist in the Empire State games, and was ranked as high as 10th in the country. She appeared likely to be headed to the Olympics before an injury sidelined the dueling part of her career, and began the coaching part.
“I always knew I wanted to go on to coaching,” says Kedoin. “The sport has given me so much in terms of the experience and it’s such a big part of who I am that I want to give it back to my team.”
That team includes four freshman and sophomores who went to the semi-finals in the Carpenter Freshman/Sophomore competition, held in Morristown High School on February 10. Sarma finished 13th out of 76 sophomore girls in epee. Freshman Anjali Baliga placed 14th out of 68 in freshman epee.
North Boys
Some North boys fared well at the Carpenter Freshman/ Sophomore competition. Adam Shih finished 10th out of 95 in sophomore sabre. Hamad Masood, a freshman, finished 14th out of 66 in the epee tournament.
This success from the younger members of the team portends a better record in the future. The North boys were 1-9 with one match left. (They fenced Somerville on March 1, after the News went to press.)
Two members of the team have been a part of the program since its beginning. As sophomores, Felix Hutchinson and Eric Szwedo were part of the small group that traveled to South for practices and stayed with it to start the Knights varsity team.
According to their coach, the two have improved in strides since the start of the program, and have been encouraged by seeing interest in the sport grow. Sophomore Austin McGuire had more than a passing interest in the sport before he joined the team. He was the team manager last year as a freshman, and this year won half his matches as a foil fencer. “He’s been working really hard, his record is great for someone who is doing this for the first time ever,” says Kedoin.
Joe Behnke is also a sophomore, and part of a varsity epee squad that Kedoin says is getting stronger with every match. Junior Stephan Haas-Heye won one out of five duels last year, and this year has improved to have a winning record.
In the first meeting with South, held at North on January 31, the Knights won a close match. They had won cross-town bragging rights, with the victory over their rivals and former teammates, but don’t expect this group of athletes to be concerned with bragging.
Kedoin stresses sportsmanship above all else while competing. “Practicing good sportsmanship is the first thing I want you to do. I set strict rules for that and for safety.”
South Girls
While Kedoin has a lifetime of experience in fencing, George Michalik has very little. In his first year as head coach of the program, he says he’s learning right along with the team.
Last year the program was coached by Ivanka Luccetti, and he had helped by setting up strips and getting equipment ready. Luccetti left, and he was asked to become coach. He has combat experience from years spent in the army, but is now retired, and enjoys overseeing the young team.
His interest in the sport comes from his granddaughter, Briana Nieradka, one of the most accomplished members of the team. She started fencing two years ago under the instruction of Marcos Lucchetti, Ivanka’s husband. Briana has become one of the best epee fencers in the district. She won second place out of 76 sophomores at the Carpenter tournament, and won a silver medal at the district competition. Her record in team matches was 18-6.
She is one of several students who have stepped up to lead the team this year. “My more proficient students are instructors for the kids coming up,” says Michalik.
Another team leader is Vivian Hou, another sophomore. Hou went 13-7 in team matches, and took third place out of 80 in the foil competition at Carpenter.
Michalik says injuries have slowed the team down this year. Kelly Cave, a sophomore, was one of the better fencers on the saber squad , and put together an 8-4 record despite injuries. “She’s still been at all the practices, and been very supportive, a real cheerleader for the rest of the team.”
South Boys
North Coach Gail Kedoin credits the rapid development of the program, and in fact its very existence, to Birgit Roy. Roy is the mother of Kiron Roy, now a senior swordsman for the Pirates. “If it wasn’t for her persistence with the school board, there wouldn’t have been a club,” said Kedoin.
Michalik says Kiron has shown the same type of enthusiasm as a member of the team. Roy is a captain, along with fellow senior epee fencer Alex Tas. The two were members of the Epee squad that qualified for the state tournament last year. “Roy has taken fencing lessons outside of the system for four years, and when he’s on, he’s on and nobody can touch him,” said Michalik. “Alex is really good. He’s a born leader.”
Senior Richard Jin is the coach’s go-to guy for the foil squad. He has been part of the program since it started as a club, and will be a big loss, as both a fencer and a leader. Michael Wang appears ready to take his place. As a member of the Bucks County fencing squad, he won two silver medals, and has racked up a number of 3-0 victories for the Pirates.
For Saber, Andrew Loss has been the senior member of the squad. His heir apparent, Dinakar Vadlamani, has shown flashes of brilliance. “He scored 15 points in the district qualifier match. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Michalik.
Alex Guo, a freshman, may already be the most experienced and accomplished member of the team. He competed on a national level last November and won the tournament, held in New Mexico. The saber swordsman won a gold medal by beating out all other 14-year old competitors. Michalik says Guo often finishes 3-0, but also has matches where the difficulty of the adjustment from the national, individual competition to the high school style is apparent. “You can’t cross your feet in high school matches. You can in the type of fencing he’s used to, and just a small adjustment of footwork can mean a lot in this sport,” says the coach.
