Fencer Spears the Competition at NCAA Championship

In five seconds, the average human being will blink once or twice, take one full breath, and experience roughly one beat of his heart. In those same five seconds, you’ll already be a full point behind Jeff Spear.

That speed—the ability to, from a static position, lunge forward and strike his opponent with his sabre in the time it takes most people to blink—is one of the biggest reasons for Spear’s rise to the top spot in the country among collegiate sabre fencers.

That individual championship at NCAA Nationals two weeks ago came as a surprise even to Spear, who admits that he had slightly less lofty goals for the tournament.

“I wanted to make All-American ... NCAA champion was not in my sights, really,” Spear said. “It still makes me really happy to think about it.”

The sophomore, who was second-team All-Ivy last year and was coming off of a series of wins at the Ivy League Championships in February, was one of two Columbia sabre fencers making the trip to Columbus, Ohio. Spear won 11 of his 14 matches on the opening day, placing him third overall going into the second day, and even managed to score the day’s only victory over top-ranked Mike Momtselidze of Ohio State. What Spear learned in his bout against Momtselidze would prove crucial for the championship match ahead.

“In the first bout, I discovered that he had a really hard time attacking against me,” Spear said. “I just pulled him back to the end of the strip and he couldn’t figure out what to do. Other people tried it, but for some reason it didn’t work.”

Spear’s second day efforts earned him one of the four semifinal spots for sabre, along with St. John’s Luther Clement, Penn State’s Daniel Bak, and Momtselidze. Both Spear and Momtselidze won narrow victories over Clement and Bak, respectively, setting up a final showdown for the individual title. Spear, for his part, tried to go into the match in a relaxed state of mind.

“When I went in there, I knew that I was already first-team All-American,” Spear said. “I didn’t really have anything to lose, but I had a lot to gain. [Head coach] George [Kolombatovich] just reminded me, ‘Make sure you go out there and have a great time, and the actions will come.’”

Using the tactics he had learned in his first match against Momtselidze, Spear forced the Ohio State senior to play at a different tempo and eventually came away with the 15-10 win. The victory made Spear the first Columbia men’s fencer to win an individual title since Jed Dupree in 2001, and for someone who was left out of nationals the year previous, the championship was a happily unexpected result after a season of hard work.

“Last year, there were two seniors [James Williams and Alex Krul] ahead of me [for nationals], so it was kind of disappointing [not to go], but I also kind of expected it,” Spear said. “It gave me a lot of drive to come back for this year and at least make All-American and prove that I could have gone last year.”

Spear is no stranger to high-level competition. Hailing from the small town of Wynantskill in upstate New York, Spear picked up fencing at the start of high school, taking interest in it through a friend. Soon enough, Spear was crisscrossing the globe to compete in Junior World Cups, making his first finals appearance in Sosnoiwiec, Poland last October. Spear credits all the international competition with preparing him for the rigor of fencing at the national level, while also acknowledging the impact that his time at Columbia has had on his fencing overall.

“It helped me learn to deal with pressure and learn why I fence, although I think that fencing for college helped fencing for World Cups more than the other way around, because fencing on the Columbia team is a lot of fun and really reminds me why I started fencing and why I love to fence.”

His sport isn’t the only thing on Spear’s mind, however. A bio-anthropology major, Spear took a trip to Taos, N.M. last summer for an archeological dig that forced him to miss a World Cup and also delay his preparation for the international season. The sophomore regrets that he had to interrupt his athletics, but says that going to Taos was a choice that he stands behind. “My academics are really important to me too, and it was an opportunity I didn’t think I could pass up.”

The varsity season may be over, but Spear’s work is far from done. Fresh off of his national title, Spear will head to Sicily for junior world championships. It’ll be his last tournament as a junior, but the senior season, delayed because of the upcoming
Summer Olympics, won’t start until November. With an NCAA championship under his belt, Spear could be forgiven for looking forward to Olympic competition, as a handful of other Columbia fencers have done. It’s too late to qualify for this summer’s games in Beijing, but Spear isn’t yet thinking about 2012 in London.

“I’ve thought about 2012, but it’s a long way away, so I don’t think about it that much,” he said. “I’ll see about it when it comes.”

For now, at least, Spear will focus on defending his title and hoping that his time on top lasts far longer than the average sabre bout.