March 18, 2005

Team Standings
Men's Sabre
Men's Foil
Men's Epee

Queens, NY - St. John's senior Sergey Isayenko (Cherkassy, Ukraine) won a gold medal in the sabre and the Red Storm fencing team maintained its position in second place at the 2005 NCAA Fencing Championships after the completion of the second round of competition.

Defending champion Ohio State, which led by seven points after the first round, extended its lead to 10 points over St. John's, as the Buckeyes have tallied 94 points to the Red Storm's 84. Penn State is in third place with 77 points, followed by Notre Dame in fourth (70) and Harvard in fifth place (65).

The Championships are being held through Sunday, March 20 at the George Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston. The women's half of the competition will begin on Saturday morning.

After winning 11 of his 14 bouts in Thursday's first round, Isayenko won eight bouts in the second round. Isayenko, who won the silver medal last year, defeated Notre Dame sophomore Patrick Ghattas, 15-12, in the championship bout. Also in the sabre, sophomore Nijmy Cadet (Saint Mark, Haiti), competing in his first NCAA Championships, won eight bouts and placed 17th overall.

"I'm very happy for Sergey, especially after finishing as the runner-up last year," St. John's Head Coach Yury Gelman said. "We didn't have as strong a performance as we had hoped overall, but I'm proud of this team. I thought the performance of Cadet was outstanding."

Senior Arpad Horvath (Budapest, Hungary), who was seeking his third individual title in the epee, placed fifth overall. Horvath won 10 bouts in the first round and six in Friday's second round. Sophomore Ben Bratton (New York, NY) won 13 bouts over the two days of competition and placed 10th overall.

In the foil, senior Nitai Kfir (Simtat-Haveredy, Israel) placed fifth overall, winning 17 bouts. Sophomore Henry Kennard (Concord, MA) won 11 bouts and placed 13th overall.

St. John's entered this year's NCAA Championships off of a sterling performance at the NCAA Northeast Regional, where they qualified 12 fencers (two from each weapon on both the men's and women's sides). The Red Storm were the only team in the country to qualify 12 fencers for the competition.

The National Collegiate Men's and Women's Fencing Championships include individual events in each of the six weapons (women's foil, women's epee, women's sabre, men's foil, men's epee, men's sabre). Fencers will compete in a round-robin of 24 fencers in five-touch bouts. After the round-robin, the top four fencers in each event will fence direct elimination 15-touch bouts for first, second, third and fourth place. Absolute ties for the seeding will be broken as follows: for positions one through three, by a coin toss; for position four, by a fence-off. An institution's place finish in the championships will be based on points earned by each individual. A team will be awarded one point for each victory by its student-athletes for the duration of the championships.