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Title
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Undergraduates Hold Annual Championships : Five Intercollegiate Titles Decided
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Date
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May 1942
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volume
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7
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issue
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2
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pages
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7-8, 16
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content
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en
Undergraduates Hold Annual Championships
FIVE INTERCOLLEGIATE TITLES DECIDED
Five intercollegiate championships—the Intercollegiate Fencing Association title, the National Collegiate A. A. championships, the Women's Intercollegiate Fencing Association competition, the Eastern Intercollegiate conference meet and the Southern Intercollegiate championships—made March and April “intercollegiate months” for fencing. There is presented here as complete an account as space limitations allow of each of these championships. The Riposte believes it is important to present as complete a picture of these competitions as possible for the record, not only because they should be of interest to all fencers, but because it is at such meets that the champions of tomorrow are coming into the fencing picture.
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The 49th annual championships of the Intercollegiate Fencing Association were held this year on March 20 and 21 at the Salle Santelli in New York City. As a result of notification in January that Yale would not participate this year an invitation was extended to Penn State, just as a similar invitation had been extended to St. John’s University last year. Following Penn State’s acceptance, Yale sought and gained readmission with the result that the bouts committee was faced with 13 complete teams in all three weapons, the largest entry list ever accepted for any I. C. F. A. championship.
Despite this direct addition of 108 bouts to a by-no-means easy schedule, the bouts committee held to the plan originally adopted for this year’s championship, as described in our last issue. The only modifications were the establishment of 5-minute time limits in sabre and epee bouts and 6-minute time limits in foil bouts and a complete discard of the original pool alignments which would have permitted fencers of the same colleges to be fencing upon adjacent strips simultaneously. There were a total of 763 bouts decided during the two-day championship. It is doubtful that so many bouts have ever been fenced on three strips in any competition limited to two days.
New York University, Army and Columbia made a close race of the 3-weapon championship with Columbia finally shaded into third place as Saturday afternoon leads by N. Y. U. and Army became too large to overtake. It was then N. Y. U. and Army in a neck and neck race until the end with N. Y. U. triumphing with a close margin of 4 points to retain possession of the I. C. F. A. three-weapon trophy for the third year in a row and for the eighth time in ten years. Columbia in third place was only 12 bouts behind the winner, which is indicative of the keenness of this three-way duel throughout.
Credit must be given to Army for one of the strongest and most evenly balanced teams that have come into intercollegiate competitions in years. Every man on that team contributed his share toward the total score but it was not enough to forestall the triple threat of N. Y. U.’s co-captain and star, Arthur Tauber, whose stamina and skill won 28 of N. Y. U.’s 78½ total points. Nor must we overlook Sol Gorlin and Arthur Frank whose sabres became inspired for N. Y. U. under the enthusiasm of their leader with the result that they each turned in as perfect individual scores as this competition showed. Columbia’s fighting foil team deserves credit too for it gave all it had toward the three-weapon total only to find that its epee and sabre teammates could not equal its contribution. That these foilsmen gave all that they had was evidenced in the finals when Columbia’s two representatives were able to mark up only one victory, the one between themselves.
The first team championship to be decided was the foil which this hard fighting Columbia team captured by noon of the second day. This was the seventh team coached by James Murray to capture the prized “Little Iron Man.” It led the field with 28 wins out of a possible 36, closely paced by Army with 25 and N. Y. U. with 22.
After losing the foil team championship for which it was the defending team, New York University stepped ahead to lay successful claim to the epee and sabre team titles. It successfully defended its epee championship with 25½ wins, followed closely by C. C. N. Y. with 22 wins and Army and Navy bunched with 21½ victories each. Squeezed out last year from the sabre title by the one bout advantages of C. C. N. Y. and Harvard who shared the title, N. Y. U. laid clear claim to this title this year with 29 wins as compared with Army’s 26 and Princeton’s 23.
When we speak of the New York University team this year we are really speaking of Arthur Tauber, the tall left-handed three-weapon star of that University. Tauber went after the team championship for his team regardless of the individual titles he might thereby sacrifice at the close of the exhausting two days of fencing. This was all the more meritable since he was the defending champion in epee and had been a silver medalist in foil the previous year. His contribution to his team was 11 foil bouts out of a possible 12, 11 epee bouts out of a possible 12 and 6 sabre bouts out of a possible 8, totaling 28 points or nearly three-eighths of N. Y. U.’s total team score. His individual batting average of .875 in the team matches was all the more remarkable in that he had never before competed in an intercollegiate sabre match.
This, however, does not complete Tauber’s record, for after the team matches he entered both the epee and foil finals, fencing 6 more epee and 7 more foil bouts, winning 10 of his 13 bouts against the toughest competitors in the championships. His total record for the two days was 38 wins out of 45 bouts for a batting average of .844.
After the excitement of Army’s close but unsuccessful tailchase of the N. Y. U. team for the 3-weapon championship, and Columbia and N. Y. U. had captured their respective team championships, the spectators returned for the individual championships on Saturday evening. These bouts were all contested on one central strip and were fought off in the following order: epee, foil and sabre.
Arthur Tauber of N. Y. U., the defending epee champion, found his epee title successfully challenged by Robert Harder of Penn State. Harder lost a 0-3 decision against Tauber in the 13th bout of the finals after Robert Gillmore had taken Tauber’s number 3-1 in the first bout of the evening. This left Harder and Tauber tied for first with 4 wins and 1 loss apiece and necessitated a fence-off. In the fence-off Harder revenged his previous loss with the same shut-out score and became the first Penn State fencer to win an I. C. F. A. championship. Tauber was, of course, second with R. H. Walker of Navy third on touches over Robert Gillmore of Hamilton after each had tied with 3 wins and 2 losses apiece.
As a result of a special invitation to Charles Steinhardt of St. John’s, defending foil champion, whose team was not entered in the championships this year, there was a seven-man foil finals as compared with the six-man finals in both epee and sabre.
The attention of the spectators was focused particularly upon Steinhardt and Tauber for these two men had tied for first place last year along with Alfred Moody of Army, since graduated, and in the 1941 round robin fence-off Steinhardt had won with Tauber second. The re-meeting of these rivals promised fencing excitement. They clashed in the seventh bout and Steinhardt bested his challenger 5-3. A successful defense of his title looked sure for Steinhardt until the 14th bout when Andrew Weigel of Army upset Steinhardt 5-3 causing another intercollegiate tie for first place between Steinhardt and Tauber with 5 wins and 1 loss each. The fence-off bout itself went to 4-4 between these well-matched foilsmen with Tauber making the deciding touch with a straight lunge into low line against which Steinhardt chose to stop-thrust rather than parry and riposte. Robert Greenbaum of the University of Pennsylvania took third place.
It was past midnight before the sabre finals began. This most popular weapon from the spectators’ viewpoint was so keenly fought that nearly half of the spectators remained until the final bout which was not finished until nearly 2 A.M. Starting strongly, Chester Butcher of Army led the field until the 10th bout when he met Sol Gorlin of N. Y. U. who upset him to the score of 5-3 with the eventual result that Butcher faced a fence-off with his teammate, Leonard Pasciak, for first place after each had won 4 and lost 1. Pasciak had by that time suffered a turned ankle but, after being strapped up, he doggedly went after his teammate for the coveted gold medal. His bid failed, however, and he accepted a second defeat from Butcher by the identical 5-2 score of their earlier meeting. Sol Gorlin of N. Y. U. was third.
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Team Results
Epee—1st, N. Y. U. (Arthur Tauber 11, Seymour Gross 9 and Jack Kahn 5½) 25½ points. 2nd, C. C. N. Y. (Gerald Widoff 11, Norman Robbins 7 and Hugh Fleming 4) 22 points. 3rd, Army and Navy (Army, Willis Crittenberger 7½, Victor Taylor 7½ and Christopher Munn 6½; Navy, R. H. Walker 10, O. F. Keeler, Jr. 6½, R. E. Blalack 3 and W. N. Nelson, Jr. 2) 21½ points each.
Sabre—1st, N. Y. U. (Sol Gorlin 11, Arthur Frank 11, Arthur Tauber 6 and Seymour Cantor 1) 29 points. 2nd, Army (Chester Butcher 11, Leonard Pasciak 8 and Coleman Richards 6) 26 points. 3rd, Princeton (John von Arnold 9, Charles S. Trattler 7 and William Leamy 7) 23 points.
Foil—1st, Columbia (Armond Mascia 10, Eaton Bayer 9 and Vincent Puente 9) 28 points. 2nd, Army (Andrew Weigel 9, George Prior 8 and Vincent Gaudiani 8) 25 points. 3rd, N. Y. U. (Arthur Tauber 11, Malcolm Lieberman 7, Ira Levy 3 and Sol Gorlin 1) 22 points.
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Individual Championship Finals
Epee
(1) Robert Harder, Penn State, 4-1; (2) Arthur Tauber, N. Y. U., 4-1; (3) R. H. Walker, Navy, 3-2; (4) George Gillmore, Hamilton, 3-2; (5) Harold Horn, Pennsylvania, 1-4; (6) Gerald Widoff, C. C. N. Y., 0-5.
First place fence-off—Harder defeated Tauber 3-0.
Foil
(1) Arthur Tauber, N. Y. U., 5-1; (2) Charles Steinhardt, St. John’s, 5-1; (3) Robert Greenbaum, Pennsylvania, 4-2; (4) Andrew Weigel, Army, 3-3; (5) William Metzger, Navy, 2-4; (6) Vincent Puente, Columbia, 1-5; (7) Armond Mascia, Columbia, 1-5.
First place fence-off—Tauber defeated Steinhardt 5-4.
Sabre
(1) Chester Butcher, Army, 4-1; (2) Leonard Pasciak, Army, 4-1; (3) Sol Gorlin, N. Y. U., 3-2; (4) Arthur Frank, N. Y. U., 2-3; (5) Herbert Hor, Columbia, 1-4; (6) Robert Greenbaum, Pennsylvania, 1-4. First place fence-off—Butcher defeated Pasciak 5-2.
