None of Temple’s 15 fencers medaled at the Garret Open at Penn State on Saturday, but two players made it to the finals and six others made it to the semifinals.
Junior Epiphany Georges came the closest to medaling, finishing fourth out of 34 in the foil competition. Georges won the silver medal at last weekend’s Temple Open.
The other finalist was Tiki Kastor, who nabbed sixth place out of 41 in the sabre competition. Kastor won the gold medal in that category last weekend.
Coach Nikki Franke said she is happy Georges is proving to be a reliable fencer.
“The thing that we are looking for from [Georges] is consistency, and she’s showing that so far this year,” Franke said. “It’s the kind of consistency that we really need from her.”
The competition started by splitting all the fencers in each competition into pools of roughly six. All the fencers in a given pool would then play each other in a round-robin style. The top fencers from each pool then advanced to the next pool, where the process was repeated. Once there were 16 fencers left, a single-elimination bracket is formed and the winner is determined from there.
The Owls had four fencers in the foil competition besides Georges. Freshman Fatima Largaespada, senior Mikayla Varadi, and freshman Demi Antipas all made it to the semifinals, finishing ninth, 11th, and 15th, respectively. Freshman Olivia Wynn finished in 26th place.
There were five Owls in the sabre competition besides Kastor. Sophomore Lauren Rangel-Friedman and junior Tasia Ford both made it the semifinals, finishing 13th and 16th, respectively. Sophomore Emily Dodson finished in 18th place. Freshman Petra Khan ended up in 23rd place and junior Andrea Haley finished in 24th place.
Temple had four fencers of 47 in the epee competition. Senior captain Jill Bratton was the only semifinalist in this group, finishing in 13th place. Junior Chantal Montros tied for 17th place with junior Kacee Albert of North Carolina. Freshman Jessica Hall took 21st place. Junior Kimberly Howell finished in 28th place.
“The competition itself went well,” Franke said. “It’s still early in the season, so it gives us an idea of things that we need to work on. Against some very strong competition I thought we did pretty well.”
Temple’s next competition is at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on Dec. 1. It is the last competition of the fall semester.
Evan Cross can be reached at evan.cross@temple.edu or on Twitter @EvanCross.
Just wanted to mention that you keep misspelling fencer Tiki Kastor’s name. It is K-astor, not C-astor. Maybe she won’t do anything worth mentioning again this season.. but in case she does.. K-A-S-T-O-R. Thank you for the articles.