The fencing teams have achieved success in their respective seasons this year, including at an invitational in Kingston, Ont.
The women’s team has finished their season, while the men’s is on the verge of their championships.
Women’s fencers wrap up season
The Carleton Ravens women’s fencing team successfully ended its season at the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) championships, held Jan. 31-Feb. 1 at York University.
Despite not being able to bring home the championship banner, the Ravens still managed to walk away with a number of medals in both the individual and team events.
Ravens fencer Isabelle Gauthier defended her gold medal from last year’s OUA championships, placing first in the individual epée event. Fellow Ravens fencer Emese Dukai won bronze in the same event.
Ravens fencer Adrienne Sukunda also won gold in the individual sabre event, improving upon her second-place result from last year’s championship, where she came second.
Carleton had a strong showing in the team event as well, winning a team gold in epée and a team bronze in sabre.
The wins in both individual and team epée mark the second year in a row that the Ravens were able to win in both events.
“There was a lot of pressure going in because I got double gold last year, so that’s kind of the standard I gave myself and I was able to get double gold again so I’m pretty happy about that,” Gauthier said.
Overall, the Ravens finished in third place with 216 points, behind the Royal Military College Paladins (220), and the Queen’s Gaels (276).
Ravens assistant coach Wesley Ross, said the women’s team has been doing well all season, despite only having six members, instead of a full team of 12.
“We’ve been hit a little bit harder on the women’s side in terms of people graduating and not being able to fill our ranks with recruits and rookies, so that’s really going to have to be a focus for us going forward,” Ross said.
Not having a full team meant the Ravens were unable to compete in the team foil event at the OUA championships.
“I think this year it was more quality than quantity, because we only had a sabre and an epée team, but the two weapons that we did have preformed really well,” Sukunda said.
Ross said so far the new fencers coming in have stepped up.
“The rookies — it’s sometimes tough because you don’t see the results of training for a little while — but I’ve been really happy with their progress,” Ross said.
“We could probably give a little shout-out to the coaches,” Adrienne Sukunda said. “They have an incredible ability to take what we have and take our strong points and emphasize them, and that’s really what carried us through the competition.”
Men’s fencers commended
The men’s fencing team was recognized at the Ottawa Sports Awards (OSA) on Jan. 28, where they took home the award for fencing team of the year.
However, the team that won the award is actually last year’s fencing team, instead of the current one, Ross said.
“It’s a little bit awkward in that the time period for the OSA and the time period for the OUA varsity tournaments are a little bit off,” he said.
While the OSA look at the whole of any one year, the tournaments the fencing team competes in for the varsity championships are all at the beginning of the year, Ross said.
He said the current men’s fencing team has had a pretty good season so far.
“We were lucky in that not too many people graduated from last year’s team,” he said. “We lost a couple of good fencers, but the core of the team is still there, so we’re in pretty good shape.”
The men’s OUA provincial fencing championships will take place from Feb. 21-22 at Brock University, where the Ravens will be looking to defend the banner they won in 2014.
