If anything, this weekend's Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships at the Gordon Track and Tennis Center showed that Harvard, though a team on the rise, lacks the stranglehold it had on the sport when the IFAs were born.

Of course, they didn't have to experience 13 bouts in twelve hours back in the 1890s.

This weekend, Harvard hosted the IFAs, and left with mixed results. The women entered the tournament with very high expectations on the strength of a 14-1 record. Their overall sixth-place finish in the three-weapon competition seemed a bit disappointing, especially since Penn, whom they had defeated 19-8 a month earlier, finished fourth.

The men's team came in eleventh place in the three-weapon, and the two squads combined for an eighth-place six-weapon finish.

"This helps us set our goals for next year," women's captain Elizabeth Aranow said. "We didn't really feel that our season record was reflected in these results."

The Crimson women featured several outstanding individual performances. Sophomore Emily Katz, a seventh-place finisher in the NCAAs last year, was one of two female foilists to qualify for yesterday's individual competition. Katz barely made it into yesterday's bracket, picking up the final qualifying spot in Group A, but went on to take third place overall in the foil.

Fellow sophomore Ellen Schulz also qualified for yesterday's individual action.

The Crimson women also received solid performances from their underclassmen. Sophomore saber Sian Kleindienst performed beyond expectations in the third slot, and freshman Liz Blase finished third in Group C with an impressive 10-2 record, falling just short of the second-place qualifying spot.