Nov. 18, 2016
By Joanne Norell
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The University of Notre Dame fencing program will compete in its final meet of 2016 this weekend when the Irish take part in the Garret Penn State Open.
WHAT: Garret Penn State Open
WHERE: White Building | University Park, Pa.
WHEN: November 19-20, 2016
LIVE RESULTS: FencingTime.com
TWITTER: @NDFencing
Penn State Open Outlook
The Irish will take part in their only individual tournament of the season over the weekend when they compete at Penn State. The women will compete on Saturday, while the men will wrap the weekend on Sunday. The men’s fencers will compete against student athletes from Penn State, the Penn State Fencing Club, Ohio State, California Institute of Technology, Yale, North Carolina and Penn, while the women will take on competitors from Fairleigh Dickinson, North Carolina, Penn State, the Penn State Fencing club, Wagner, Penn, Ohio State, Temple, Yale and CIT.
Irish Lineups
Women’s Foil: Erin Dietsche, Reagan Fitzgerald, Lee Kiefer, Zoe Loh, Finnula Mageras, Samantha Viqueira
Women’s Epee: Julia Barry, Katherine Clarke, Erin Coscia, Molly Hudson, Eva Niklinska, Marie-Anne Roche, Amanda Sirico, Katherine Wallace
Women’s Sabre: Allison Barry, Christina Boitano, Natalie Disher, Tara Hassett, Regina O’Brien
Men’s Foil: Michael Antipas, Steffen Felt, Hazem Khazbak, Axel Kiefer
Men’s Epee: Aidan Antekeier, Dylan French, Nicholas Hanahan, Cole Mallette, Darius Zacharakis, Zachary Zeller
Men’s Sabre: David Brown, Paul Cepak, Ariel Croitoru, Ian Jones, Blake Murphy, Arsenii Panteleev, Jonah Shainberg
Last Time Out
Both Notre Dame men’s and women’s fencing teams came away from the Elite Invitational with 4-1 records to open the NCAA slate on November 5. The Irish men defeated NJIT, Princeton, Yale, and North Carolina, while the women upended Temple, Yale, Penn and Cornell. The men fell to Penn, while the women dropped to Princeton.
For the men, foilist Hazem Khazbak was 6-0, while squad-mate Axel Kiefer went 7-2. Dylan French went 6-2 in epee, while Jonah Shainberg was 8-6 in sabre. On the women’s side, Amanda Sirico went 7-5 in epee, Elyssa Kleiner was 8-2 in foil and Francesca Russo went 9-6 in sabre.
First Meet Back
The Penn State Open will mark the first meet in which senior Lee Kiefer will compete in for the Irish since returning from a year spent training for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. Kiefer advanced to the Women’s Foil Round of 16 during the Rio Games. She is currently ranked No. 1 in the Senior Women’s Foil standings by USA Fencing and finished fifth at the Senior Women’s Foil World Cup in St-Maur, France, November 4-5.
— ND —
Joanne Norell, athletics communications assistant director at the University of Notre Dame, has been part of the Fighting Irish athletics communications team since 2014 and coordinates communications efforts for the Notre Dame women’s soccer, men’s tennis, women’s tennis and fencing programs. Norell is a 2011 graduate of Purdue University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communication, and earned her master’s degree in sports industry management from Georgetown University in 2013.