The Carleton Ravens men’s fencing team took home several gold medals at the 2014 Ontario University Athletics (OUA) fencing championship at McMaster University Feb. 1-2.
The Ravens finished the championship with 273 points to win the overall team event, defeating three-time reigning OUA champions, the Queen’s University Gaels, who finished second with 218 points.
The last time the Gaels did not win the overall team title was in 2009-10, when the Ravens last won the title.
“We had a really strong year, but there were some other really good teams this year like Toronto and Queen’s, so it felt really good to beat the heavyweights,” Ravens head coach Eli Sukunda said.
In the team categories for the individual events, the Ravens won the gold in both the foil and épée team events and finished in fourth in the sabre event.
Carleton took the foil title away from the University of Toronto Varsity Blues who had previously won the team foil competition six consecutive seasons.
The Ravens also had strong individual finishes with first-year Phil McCully winning gold in the foil, third-year Alexandre Salat taking home the bronze in the foil, and first-year Zachary Zanussi winning the silver medal in the individual épée competition.
“Phil was undefeated for the whole weekend, individual and team events combined. He was fencing extremely well,” Sukunda said via email.
Sukunda said he is pleased with the team’s performance at the competition.
“We went in and we won and we’re pretty happy with that,” he said. “We were very pleased with the way things turned out.”
With a number of returning members on the team, Sukunda said he expects the team to be strong come next year.
“We’re hoping to have a good year of recruiting, but we still have a lot of strong first and second-year members on our team,” Sukunda said.
The only event Carleton did not receive a medal in, both individually and in the team event, was the sabre category, an event Sukunda said they plan to address in the off-season.
“The most necessary improvements for next year must be in the Sabre category. We have to turn our attention there,” Sukunda said via email.
