After disquieting loss to Penn last Saturday, the Crimson fencing team has an excellent opportunity this weekend to regain a positive, winning attitude when it faces Rutgers tonight and Princeton tomorrow afternoon. Both matches are to be held in New Jersey. "I hope that the loss against Penn will be the last one of the season," Crimson coach Edo Marion said yesterday.

"I knew one thing for sure," said. Geza Tattrallay, one of the epee fencers who lost all his matches to Penn. "The only direction that we on the epee team can go is up. We should win at least some boats."

Choke

In the loss to Penn, the Crimson epee squad choked miserably, and the epee men know that only too well. During practice this week, both Tattrallay and Mickey Irvings, epee fencers with NCAA experience, have been working especially hard so that they will not be shut out again.

"Up until this week. I had been afraid to practice because I felt that my knees, both of which have torn cartilage, would give out on me," Tattrallay said. "I'm not as afraid of that anymore, and I've practiced all week."

Irvings, who has had no physical injuries, has worked to overcome an emotional lightness that has not allowed him to move as quickly and as efficiently as he should. "Irvings is an emotional fencer, and he has tried to keep up his image from last year when be finished third in the Easterns. Consequently, he has been too cautious and too light," coach Marion said.

Irvings has been working on his looseness all week.

The team will travel to Rutgers with the same line-up that it took to Penn. Its strengths-both at the foil and the saber-should be enough to defeat the Scarlet Knights. It is unlikely that its weakness at epee will bring it to defeat again.