Henderson Gymnasium rang with the clash of steel on steel as the Shippensburg University Fencing Club hosted West Chester University and Kutztown University in the club’s first-ever home tri-meet.

A total of 36 fencers in six groups duked it out across the six strips laid out on the gymnasium floor.

The first part of the match consisted of round-robin preliminaries, with each group of fencers being assigned to a lane and then conducting bouts against each other, with each bout going to five points. West Chester dominated the preliminaries, with fencer Robert Clift scoring 25 points alone.

After the preliminaries came the direct elimination bouts. Sixteen fencers from the preliminaries carried on to the direct elimination bracket: 12 from West Chester, two from Kutztown and two from SU.

One of SU’s fencers, Kayla Keller, was eliminated in the eighth-finals, but the other, Brad Solorzano, managed to last to the quarterfinals. The quarterfinals were also the last stop for the two Kutztown fencers, Michael O’Donohue and Dakota Hendricks, leaving the semi-finals solely composed of fencers from West Chester.

Before the final bout was played out, Robert Clift and Ben Hauser of West Chester duked it out for third. Hauser came out on top, scoring 10 points to Clift’s six. Following Clift and Hauser’s bout, Matt Wallace and Scott Hoffman crossed blades, with first place hanging in the balance.

After a tense bout, Wallace took the gold, edging out Hoffman by a point. Hoffman took silver, leaving Hauser to take bronze. Following the final bout, the West Chester fencing club saluted both Shippensburg and Kutztown, thanking them for the match.

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Lexi Mills, SU fencing club president. “It’s good practice to be able to fence people you haven’t fenced against. In our club, it’s pretty easy to pick up on each other’s fencing techniques and styles, so having new people to fence is good practice.” 

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