Despite Season's Early End, Fencing Class of 2023 Stands Out
5/11/2020
There are seven members of the Princeton fencing Class of 2023, and when the bids came out for the 2020 NCAA Championships, all seven were on the list.
The class made up more than half of Princeton’s bids as the program maxed out its 12 tickets to the NCAAs. Only Notre Dame and Ohio State joined Princeton in getting 12 competitors to the NCAA finals in 2020.
That meet, though, did not happen. A week before the championships were to begin, the NCAA canceled all remaining winter and spring championships for 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
That meant that the Class of 2023 wouldn’t get to see the impact it would have for the program at the highest level of competition, at least in its first year.
What it doesn’t mean is that confidence for the rest of the class’s career is dampened.
Finn Miller, the lone member of the class on the men’s side, finished third at the NCAA Mid-Atlantic/South Regional in what turned out to be the season’s final meet. Three days later, he got the official word that that finish, along with his regular-season performance, was enough to get an NCAA bid in his first try.
“I was really confident that I was able to qualify,” Miller said. “It does give me confidence to keep going strong into next season, and I know that we have some really great fencers coming in, so I’m really confident in what our team is going to be able to do next year with all the great talent that we’re getting.”
Miller and his freshman counterparts on the women’s side had in common the ability to help the team immediately, and the connection between the men’s and women’s programs is different than most sports in that the teams practice together, and under one coaching staff.
That said, Miller had the experience of being the lone freshman member of the men’s fencing team, while the six women made up more than half of their team.
“At first it was a little intimidating because I’ve been used to being around a lot of other guys at my club, but all the upperclassmen, guys on the team were super welcoming, and it’s a great group of women who are freshmen too,” Miller said. “I’ve known some of them since I was about 14 because of all the competitions.”
The relative smallness of the fencing world made things much less unfamiliar, too.
“I’ve just known all of them from traveling together,” Miller said of the freshmen on the women’s side. “At all the North American Cups, we meet up and introduce each other and get to know each other.”
While the fencing program draws from all over the world, the popularity of the sport in the Northeast helped the class enter with a sense of familiarity as well. Three fencers on the women’s side are from New Jersey with another from Long Island, all in the freshman class, and Miller, also from New Jersey, was one of six Northeasterners on the men’s roster of 11. Four of those are from the Garden State, with another Long Islander.
“Two of the girls coming in, Sofia (Komar) and Lola (Constantino), went to the same club as me, so we practiced every day with each other, and just from practicing together and seeing their successes, I knew that we were going to do really well,” Miller said. “I heard great things about Alexis (Anglade), Ryan (Jenkins), May (Tieu), Morgan (Lee), so I was pretty confident in what the class was going to do.”
Princeton picked up eight All-Ivy League honors, based on performance at the Ivy League Round-Robin about a month before the NCAA regional, and four of those went to freshmen.
When the NCAA regional came around, Princeton came home with four individual weapon titles, its most since 2014, and the 12 NCAA bids put Princeton at a maximum it reached six times in seven seasons between 2010 and 2016, but not since.
Tieu was one of those NCAA regional champs, and one of two in the freshman class along with Anglade. That she and her classmates were so successful was of no surprise to Tieu.
“I was really excited to be recruited with them,” Tieu said. “For some of the girls, we were fencing on the U.S. World Junior team together, so I was really excited that we would all come together and fence for Princeton.”
That confidence helped, but there was still an adjustment to a team environment in an individual sport. The six freshman women not only outnumbered the rest of the classes combined, but the team had no seniors this past season, with two juniors and two sophomores.
“They did bring a lot of experience and maturity to the team,” Tieu said of the returning fencers. “Even though our freshman class was very competitive outside of Princeton fencing, we were still very new to the whole collegiate experience, so it was really nice to have them lead us around the qualification process and college life in general.”
For a program that won the NCAA title in 2013 during a stretch in which it brought home a top-four trophy every year for seven straight years, and has finished in the top 10 every year since 1993, March goes a long way in determining success. That all seven freshmen qualified, and that the class made up all six qualifiers on the women’s side, leaves the Class of 2023 feeling good about the chances for success to come. For the immediate future, 10 of the 12 qualifiers are able to return for a run in 2021.
“This was really exciting because I wasn’t sure how I would do with the collegiate format, so even though I didn’t get to fence at NCAAs, I do feel really confident, especially being surrounded with my five other freshman teammates,” Tieu said. “We’re going to go through these next three years really strong.”
