The women’s fencing team went 5-and-1, only losing to Northwestern in the Philadelphia Invitational, at Pearson and McGonigle halls Saturday.
“Over all I was very pleased, the girls were very focused,” coach Nikki Franke said. “They were very supportive of each other and they did some really nice things.”
In their final match of the day, the Owls squared off with Big 5 rival, the University of Pennsylvania. Temple, ranked No. 9 in the country, was able to pull off a victory against 10th ranked Penn by a final score of 18-to-9.
“Penn is a very good team and we were just very fortunate to win,” Franke said. “Against Northwestern we kept dropping 5-4 bouts, against Penn we were winning those bouts and that makes all the difference in the world.”
Along with beating Penn, Temple also beat Haverford, Johns Hopkins, Cornell and Farleigh Dickinson on the afternoon. Fencing in the Philadelphia Invitational started at 8 a.m. and lasted until around 6 p.m.
“We had a really long day, this tournament is super challenging from the get-go,” senior foil Mikayla Varadi said. “We performed so well I couldn’t be happier with my squad, we took a tough loss to Northwestern but we face them next weekend so overall I’m ecstatic with our team performance.”
Temple will now turn their attention to getting even with Northwestern as they travel to Chicago for Northwestern’s Multi-Meet.
Anthony Bellino can be reached at anthony.bellino@temple.edu or on Twitter @Bellino_Anthony,
Be the first to comment