“She felt, and I agreed, that she was a lot looser the second year after winning the NCAA Championships because you’ll always have a tremendous amount of pressure to perform,” Brand said. “This year she felt a lot better and there was no pressure.”

Kiefer’s younger sister, Lee Kiefer, a freshman at Notre Dame, won the foil event. The younger Kiefer dropped just one bout of her 23 qualifying matches, the contest with her sister.

Freshman Nina van Loon was the next top fencer for the Crimson. Van Loon came out with an indicator of four over her 12 wins for eleventh place. Teammate Emma Vaggo was close behind in fourteenth with 10 victories.

In the saber, first-year Aliya Itzkowitz picked up a twelfth place finish with 11 winning bouts and a positive indicator of three. Sophomore Kara Lee was three behind in fifteenth with 11 wins as well, yet had a negative indicator of nine to push her back in the standings.

“Overall it shows that we have very strong fencers on this team,” Brand said. “We have something we can build on next year when we’ll have a couple of very good fencers coming in. I’m very hopeful that we’ll do better next year.”

—Staff writer Cordelia F. Mendez can be reached at cordeliamendez@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter at @CrimsonCordelia.