“You really get the sense of it being a team competition, and you get to cheer your team mates on,” Hagamen said. “It’s nice to have more people there, and also we get to show everyone that we are a contender. We are a strong fencing school now.”
In the saber finals, fellow junior David Jackus jumped an impressive five places from the preliminaries to end the tournament with a 12th-place finish, matching his result from the 2004 NCAA competition. In the men’s foil, sophomore Enoch Woodhouse—Harvard’s sole competitor in the event—finished in 19th-place. Woodhouse finished fifth in the foil event at last year’s NCAA meet. Junior Julian Rose and freshman Benjamin Ungar finished back-to-back in the men’s epée finals, placing sixth and seventh respectively.
On the women’s side, Harvard’s freshman class proved it means business. Three of the five women that the Crimson brought to the tournament were freshmen, and all three turned in solid performances in the finals.
“The freshman class has a lot of talent and enthusiasm, and they are very hard working,” junior Chloe Stinetorf said. “All their hard work this season paid off at the tournament. I was especially proud of everyone because it is a very intense tournament, but they all did well and had a good time.”
Stinetorf, the Crimson’s other representative in the foil finals finished the finals with a 17th-place showing, adding to her 11th and 12th place finishes.
Given her prior successes, Stinetorf had hoped for more but was nevertheless content with her performance.
“I would have liked to have been All-American,” Stinetorf said. “But the tournament was really tough and a challenging competition, even more so than the past two years. I was hoping to do better, but it was still good overall.”
The competition continued successfully for the Harvard women in the other disciplines. The freshman class proved its strength yet again, with Carolyn Wright capturing sixth place and Alexa Weingarden taking 14th in the saber. Sophomore Jasmine McGlade rounded out her 2005 season with a seventh place finish in the epée.
A sixth-place finish at the NCAA competition marks the end of a successful season for both the men and women’s teams, with highlights such as dual Ivy and dual ECAC-IFA championship titles. The team made remarkable strides as the women grabbed their first Ivy League title in program history and the men captured their first Ivy League title since 1997, but none were greater than its achievements in Houston.