** ALL DATA ON THIS PAGE COURTESY OF CollegeFencing360.com – please credit accordingly. **
FOUR RECEIVE MAXIMUM 12 SPOTS INTO
2019 NCAA FENCING CHAMPIONSHIP FIELD
Two-time defending champion Notre Dame joins three others – growing rival Columbia (2016 & ’17 NCAA champ), longtime rival Penn State and Harvard –
with a dozen entries into 2019 NCAAs; no teams with 11 bids but four others
have 10 (Duke, Ohio State, St. John's & Yale).
(Note: Click Here for full in-depth rundown/all sections for 2018 NCAA field
… and here was the full CF360 summary on the 2016 NCAA field).
> 2019 NCAA Live Results (updated after each round)
** Additional Postseason Portal blog posts will be coming here on CF360 throughout the 2019 NCAAs, highlighting certain bonus notes. Also note that various photos will be added to this page, time permitting. … And be sure to follow as well via Twitter, at @CF360updates.
2019 Postseason Portal (Results)
2019 NCAA Fencing Championship (March 21–24; Cleveland, OH; Wolstein Center):
NCAA Championships (HTML; updated several times daily, after each round)
NCAA Results (PDF) to be added, after: Day–1 | Day–2 | Day–3 | Day–4
Official NCAA Release (2019 NCAA qualifiers)
2019 NCAA Regional Results: Northeast | Mid-Atlantic/South | Midwest | West
2019 Postseason Portal (Information, Notes & History)
• SECTION I – General summary of NCAA entrants (scroll down)
(additional Postseason Portal blog entries/sections will be linked here throughout the 2019 NCAAs)
RELEASE: March 19, 2019
Contact: Pete LaFleur (editor@collegefencing360.com)
(3/5/19) ... Four teams – Columbia, Harvard, Notre Dame and Penn State – received the maximum 12 individual qualifiers for the 2019 NCAA Combined Men’s and Women’s Fencing Championship, to be held March 21–24 in Cleveland. It’s a virtual certainty that one of those four 12-entrant teams will win the NCAA title, as – for the second straight year – no teams received 11 bids (four have 10: Duke, Ohio State, St. John's and Yale).
(A full listing of the 144 entrants in the 2019 NCAAs in included at the bottom of this page, which also includes an assortment of overview notes.)
In the 19 previous years of the NCAA Combined Men’s and Women’s Fencing Championship (since 2000), only once has a team has won the national title with fewer than 12 fencers: in 2005, when 11-fencer Notre Dame (and runner-up Ohio State, for that matter) both topped the lone 12-fencer team that year, third-place finisher St. John’s.
If one of the 10-bid teams (Duke, Ohio State, St. John’s or Yale) somehow manages to outscore all four of the 12-bid teams en route to the 2019 title, that team will have bucked significant mathematical odds. St. John’s qualified no men’s foilists … Ohio State is short two on the women’s side (one each in epee and sabre) … Duke has the max. six women’s entrants but only four men (one each in men’s foil & sabre) … and Yale has only one qualifier in both men’s and women’s sabre.
Beyond the eight teams with double-digit qualifiers, the University of Pennsylvania is next with seven entrants in the 2019 NCAAs (one in each weapon except men’s sabre, with two). Princeton is next with an uncharacteristically low six NCAA qualifiers, including only one woman. Two elite Princeton women’s fencers – Maia Chamberlain (sabre) and Kasia Nixon (epee) – were 2018 NCAA weapon champions but both will not be defending their titles this season. Chamberlain is taking two years off from college fencing in pursuit of a spot on the 2020 Olympic team, while Nixon did not fence in the 2019 NCAA Mid-Atlantic/South Regional, due to a World Cup conflict (she had won the Ivy League women’s epee title a couple weeks earlier). The Tigers’ five men’s NCAA entrants include only one in sabre.
Stanford also features six total entrants in the 2019 NCAAs (one in each weapon), followed by its regional rival UC San Diego with five (one in every weapon except women’s foil). NYU’s four NCAA qualifiers include pair of men’s foilists, plus one each in men’s sabre and women’s foil.
In addition to the four 2019 teams with 12 total entrants, Ohio State also features the full six men’s qualifiers while Duke and St. John's are the only other women’s programs with six in the 2019 field. There are two 2019 teams with five men’s qualifiers – Princeton and Yale – while Yale also has sent five women’s fencers to the 2019 NCAAs, as has Northwestern. Yale joins the four 12-bid teams as the only schools to qualify five-plus men and five-plus women’s fencers.
Among schools that sponsor only women’s fencing on the varsity level, two others (in addition to Northwestern) have qualified three-plus fencers into the 2019 NCAA field: Cornell (3) and Temple (3).
This marks the fifth straight year that both Notre Dame and Columbia have earned the maximum 12 NCAA entrants. Coincidentally, those teams account for each of the four previous NCAA team champions: Columbia in 2015 and ’16, followed by Notre Dame in 2017 and ’18. ND’s title in 2017 prevented Columbia from becoming the first program since 2000 to win three consecutive NCAA fencing championships … with the Irish now on that quest. The 2018 championship marked Notre Dame’s fifth NCAA title in a 16-year span (also ’03, ’05 and ’11).
The annual 144-fencer field (24 each in men’s foil/epee/sabre, and women's foil/epee/sabre) features fencers from 26 total schools, including five teams with three each: Air Force (2 m-foil and a w-epeeist) … the Cornell women (2 sabre; 1 epee) … Incarnate Word (2 m-epee; 1 w-foil) … North Carolina (1 each m-sabre, w-foil & w-sabre) … and the Temple women (2 sabre; 1 foil).
Wayne State qualified fencers in men’s epee and women’s sabre. And these six round out the teams with 2019 NCAA participants: Boston College, Detroit & NJIT in men's sabre … Brown (men’s foil) … Fairleigh Dickinson (women’s foil) … and Stevens Tech (men’s epee).
• Competition Format – All fencers compete in a round-robin format of 23 five-touch bouts, spread out over two days (men on Thur.-Fri., March 21-22; followed by the women on the weekend). The team scoring is simple – with each individual victory counting as one point to the team total. The top-four finishers in each weapon will contend for individual titles (men on Friday afternoon, women Sunday), with 15-touch semifinals and title bouts. Those closing individual bouts do not factor into the team point totals.
>> 2019 NCAA Fencing Championship Entrants: <<
12 – Columbia, Harvard, Notre Dame & Penn State
10 – Duke (1 men’s foil; 1 men’s sabre)
Ohio State (1 women’s epee; 1 women’s sabre)
St. John’s (no men’s foilists)
Yale (1 men’s sabre; 1 women’s sabre)
7 – Pennsylvania (1 MF + 1 ME + 2 MS + 1 WF/WE/WS)
6 – Princeton (2 MF + 2 ME + 1 MS + 1 WE)
Stanford (1 in each weapon)
5 – UC San Diego (1 each MF, ME, MS, WE & WS)
Northwestern* (only 1 WS)
4 – NYU (2 MF + 1 MS + 1 WF)
3 – Air Force (2 MF & 1 WE)
Cornell* (1 WE & 2 WS)
Incarnate Word (2 ME & 1 WF)
North Carolina (MS + WF + WS)
Temple* (1 WF & 2 WS)
2 – Wayne State (ME & WS)
1 – Boston College (MS), Brown (MF), Detroit (MS), Fairleigh Dickinson* (WF), NJIT (MS) & Stevens Tech (ME)
* – these schools sponsor only women’s fencing varsity programs
notes: in addition to Columbia, Harvard, ND & PSU, OSU also qualified 6 men’s fencers, as did the Duke and SJU women.
2019 Postseason Portal (Results)
2019 NCAA Fencing Championship (March 21–24; Cleveland, OH; Wolstein Center):
NCAA Championships (HTML; updated several times daily, after each round)
NCAA Results (PDF) to be added, after: Day–1 | Day–2 | Day–3 | Day–4
Official NCAA Release (2019 NCAA qualifiers)
2019 NCAA Regional Results: Northeast | Mid-Atlantic/South | Midwest | West
2019 Postseason Portal (Information, Notes & History)
• SECTION I – General summary of NCAA entrants (above)
(additional Postseason Portal blog entries/sections will be linked here throughout the 2019 NCAAs)