Fencing Season Cut Too Short

For a sport with swords, screaming, and a whole lot of fist pumping, Ivy League fencing does not like drama.

But last year, someone tried to change that. What we are left with is an Ivy fencing season that lasts precisely two weeks.

Last Sunday, the Columbia fencing team made the trip to Philadelphia for the first meet of the Ivy championships. Facing Brown, Yale, and Cornell in one fell swoop, the Lions crossed half of their conference season off the calendar. In two weeks time, they will go to Harvard for the decisive second part when one team will claim the crown.

And just like that, the Ancient Eight's most successful sport will forget about the team rivalries and go back to being the place where elite individuals come to boost their power rankings.

Until the 2005-2006 season, Ivy meets would be spread out over a period of about six weeks. Every weekend, each team would host up to three or four schools with the matches against the single visiting league rival as the showcase event.

Thus, under the old system, there was time for the team to slowly put together an exciting season and win the favor of any sport's best friend: hype. In a sport like fencing, where fan support is limited at best, any excuse to bring in an extra fan is a good one.

And that makes the two-part championship even more ridiculous. Only two schools host it each season, meaning that in the rotation each pair is expected to host it every three years-it isn't every four years since Dartmouth does not have a fencing program and Cornell only has a women's team. This means that fans who aren't willing to travel to follow the program-and I've never seen a fan bus for the fencing team-only get to see an Ivy League match once every three years.

It also makes the rest of the season pretty much pointless, at least from the team's perspective.

Now the meets against mediocre teams, like the dual meet against NYU, Sacred Heart, and Vassar last week, don't even have a league matchup to spice them up. As for the meets against top teams-such as the Lions' season opener on Jan. 28 that featured national powerhouses Notre Dame, Ohio State and St. John's-they don't mean anything to the team as a whole in what is already an individualistic sport.

In those meets, the mantra of Dumas' fictional swordsmen, "All for one and one for all," is about as dated as their hats-I don't care who you are, D'Artagnan, big floppy hats with feathers in them went out with zoot suits. Facing the top fencers in the country is the best opportunity that the Columbia fencers get to boost their personal records and power rankings in order to qualify for the NCAA Championships in March.

To those who might argue that, like the NCAAs which take place over a single weekend, the two-part meet condenses all the excitement of a title chase into two dates, I would say, just look at last year.

For the inaugural attempt at the two-part championship, half the teams were forced to schedule make-up dates in the middle of the week to fence Princeton, since the Tigers had been caught in a snowstorm. Incidentally, has anyone looked outside recently? Anyone would have a hard time convincing me that it couldn't happen again.

If we were to boil down Columbia's season to only days that were significant, its campaign would come to exactly six days. That's including a trip to the National Championships where, again, esprit de corps is distinctly absent. Compare that to a National Championship run in basketball, soccer, or football which would require at least 15 significant dates in a season, and you'll understand why Ivy League fencing is still off the radar. And that's despite being among the best in the nation, something Ancient Eight sports can't boast very often.