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History in the Making
Part I.: Three-Time NCAA Champs
Two of the fencers in action at the 2009 NCAAs – Ohio State senior men's foilist Andras Horanyi (Boulder, Colo.) and Wayne State junior men's epeeist Slava Zingerman (Ashkelon, Israel) – already owned two NCAA individual titles. Both fencers had the chance – by winning another title – to join an exclusive group of fencers who have totaled three-plus NCAA titles.
Horanyi suffered a series of early 5-4 losses at the '09 NCAAs and failed to reach the four-fencer medal round, ultimately placing 7th for second team All-America honors. Zingerman was second after the men's epee round-robing (17-6) and went on to win his third straight title, following a 15-11 semifinal vs. Harvard's Benji Ungar (the '06 NCAA champ) and a 15-7 title bout vs. Princeton's Graham Wicas.
In 2010, Zingerman could have the chance to become an extremely rare four-time NCAA champion (something achieved only twice previously, by one men's fencer and one women/see list below). It's been 13 years since any fencer "four-peated" and no men's fencer has turned in that feat since the late 1980s.
Interestingly enough, the 12 previous fencers with three or more NCAA titles included more from Wayne State (3, now 4) than any other school, plus two each from NYU, Ohio State and Penn State (also one each from Columbia, Notre Dame and Stanford). The 13 "three-peat/four-peat" champions now include 10 men (four foilists, four sabreists, two epeeists) and three women (two foilists, one epeeist). Of the three total epeeists to be three/four-time champs, two of them have come from Wayne State.
FENCERS WHO HAVE WON THREE OR FOUR NCAA INDIVIDUAL TITLES
Bruce Soriano (3) ... men's sabre ... Columbia (1970-72)
Risto Hurme (3) ... men's epee ... NYU (1973-75)
Greg Benko (3) ... men's foil ... Wayne State (1974-76)
Ernest Simon (3) ... men's foil ... Wayne State (1978, '80-'81) ... Melbourne, Australia
Michael Lofton (4) ... men's sabre ... NYU (1984-87)
Nick Bravin (3) ... men's foil ... Stanford (1990, '92-'93) ... Los Angeles, Calif.
Thomas Strzalkowski (3) ... men's sabre ... Penn State (1992-94)
Olga Kalinovskaya (4) ... women's foil ... Penn State (1993-96) ... St. Petersburg, Russia
Alicja Kryczalo (3) ... women's foil ... Notre Dame (2002-04) ... Gdansk, Poland Slava Zingerman (3) ... men's epee ... Wayne State (2006-08) ... Ashkelon, Israel
Boaz Ellis (3) ... men's foil ... Ohio State (2004-06) ... Tzippori, Israel
Adam Crompton ... men's sabre ... Ohio State (2003-04, '06) ... Newark, N.J.
Anna Garina (3) ... women's epee ... Wayne State (2004-05, '07) ... Kiev, Ukraine
Former NYU men's sabreist Michael Lofton (1984-87) and Penn State women's foilist Olga Kalinovskaya (1993-96) are the only fencers ever to win four NCAA individual titles. The three other men's saberists who have been three-time champs include Columbia's Bruce Soriano ('70-'72), PSU's Thomas Strzalkowski ('92-'94) and Ohio State's Adam Crompton ('03, '04, '06).
The four men's foilists who have been three-time NCAA champions include: Wayne State's Greg Benko ('74-'76) and Ernest Simon ('78, '80, '81), Stanford's Nick Bravin ('90, '92-'93) and OSU's Boaz Ellis ('04-'06), who beat his teammate Horanyi in the 2006 NCAA final.
Notre Dame women's foilist Alicja Kryczalo won the NCAA title from 2002-04, before losing the 2005 NCAA final to Harvard's Emily Cross (now a fifth-year senior with the Crimson, after fencing for Team USA at the 2008 Olympics).
Epee typically is the most unpredictable of the three weapons, and accordingly the feat of pulling off an NCAA title "three-peat" has been accomplished by only one men's epeeist (nearly 35 years ago, by NYU's Risto Hurme from '73-'75) and one women's epeeist (WSU's Anna Garina, in '04, '05 and '07).
Zingerman is one of nine fencers ever to win three NCAA titles in consecutive years
Bruce Soriano (3) ... men's sabre ... Columbia (1970-72) Thomas Strzalkowski (3) ... men's sabre ... Penn State (1992-94) Boaz Ellis (3) ... men's foil ... Ohio State (2004-06) NO Michael Lofton (4) ... men's sabre ... NYU (1984-87) Olga Kalinovskaya (4) ... women's foil ... Penn State (1993-96) Alicja Kryczalo (3) ... women's foil ... Notre Dame (2002-04) Slava Zingerman (3) ... men's epee ... Wayne State (2006-08)
Risto Hurme (3) ... men's epee ... NYU (1973-75)
Greg Benko (3) ... men's foil ... Wayne State (1974-76)
During the current decade, only two fencers – Kryczalo and Garina – have reached the NCAA final in their weapon during all four years of their college eligibility (Horanyi has the chance to join them in that distinction). Garina lost the 2006 NCAA women's epee final to PSU's Katarzyna Trzopek, who also was NCAA champion in 2003.
By winning a third NCAA title (in '09, or potentially 2010), Zingerman would become the first men's epeeist in 34 years to be a three-time national champion.
NCAA individual championships have been awarded every year since 1941 (aside from the 1943-46 World War II. era), in each of the three weapons. Women's foil was introduced as an NCAA individual weapon in 1982, women's epee in 1995 and women's sabre in 2000. Two-time Olympian Sada Jacobson is the only fencer ever to win multiple NCAA women's sabre titles (at Yale, in 2000 and 01), in the brief history of that weapon. The 14 years of NCAA women's epee bouting have yielded only two repeat champions: Trzopek and Garina.
In addition to the various fencers mentioned above, there have been four other two-time NCAA champions during the current decade: Stanford men's foilist Felix Reichling ('99, '00), PSU men's foilist Non Panchan ('02, '03), St. John's men's epee standout Arpad Horvath ('02, '04) and SJU men's sabreist Ivan Lee ('01, '02) ... for a total of 11 repeat champions since 2000 (also Jacobson, Kryczalo, Garina, Ellis, Crompton, Trzopek and Zingerman).
There has been at least one repeat champion in each of the past seven NCAA Championships: Lee and Jacobson in 2002; Panchan and Kryczalo in '03; Horvath, Crompton and Kryczalo in '04; Ellis and Garina in '05; Ellis, Crompton and Trzopek in '06; Garina in '07; and Horanyi and Zingerman in '08.
Ellis and Crompton are the only teammates ever to win their respective third (or fourth) NCAA title in the same year.
One other factoid: should Horanyi win the 2009 NCAA title, that would mark the sixth straight NCAA men's foil championship claimed by an Ohio State fencer. Such a streak is unprecedented, in any weapon. There has been only one other time that a school has won the same weapon five straight years, when Penn State's "Olga connection" of Olga Chernyak ('92) and Kalinovskaya ('93-'96) brought home the NCAA women's foil titles.