No. 7 Fencing Goes 5-1 on First Day of Philadelphia Invitational

Saturday, January 20

Philadelphia, Pa.

All Day

Temple University

FDU, NYU, NJIT, Duke, Cornell, Northwestern

No. 7 Fencing Goes 5-1 on First Day of Philadelphia Invitational

1.20.18 | Women's Fencing

PHILADELPHIA (Penn) - It was nearly a perfect day for No. 7 Temple fencing, as the Owls went 5-1 on the first day of the Philadelphia Invitational hosted by Penn. Temple (12-4) won its first five matches before falling to No. 8 Northwestern.

Meet Results
> The sabre squad went undefeated with a perfect mark of 6-0.
> The Owls started out with a 22-5 win vs. FDU and followed it with a 21-6 win vs. NYU.
> In their third straight match before lunch, Temple bested NJIT, 17-10.
> To start the afternoon, the Owls beat Duke 16-11 before toppling Cornell, 19-8.
> Sabre's 8-1 result against Duke was key, with foil and epee narrowly falling 4-5.
> Finally, Northwestern got the best of Temple by a score of 16-11.
> The sabre squad was also victorious against the Wildcats to finish at 6-0, beating Northwestern 5-4.

Individual Highlights
> Sophomores Malia Hee and Kerry Plunkett, both sabre, posted the day's best records of 11-2. Hee was 3-0 against both Duke and Northwestern, while Plunkett went 3-0 against NYU and Cornell.
> Freshman Eva Hinds and junior Blessing Olaode were also strong for sabre, finishing 8-3 and 5-2, respectively.
> Junior Fiona Fong had the top record for epee at 9-3, while senior Safa Ibrahim was 8-4.
> Freshman Kari Weiner went 8-5 for the foil squad including a 3-0 mark vs. Cornell, while junior Auset Muhammad went 9-7 and sophomore Kennedy Lovelace finished at 8-7.

Thoughts from Head Coach Dr. Nikki Franke
> "Overall, it was a good day. The girls fenced well and we were very pleased. Northwestern is a very good team. We had the lead for awhile but we lost it, and it was hard to recover from that. All in all, we definitely saw stronger fencing from our team than in the past couple of weeks, so we're definitely moving in the right direction. Tomorrow it's back to the drawing board and we'll look to improve on our record."

Up Next
> Sunday's action begins at 1 p.m. for the Owls, who will face Yale, Wagner, Brown and No. 2 Columbia.

Temple 22, FDU 5
Foil: 7-2
Sabre: 9-0
Epee: 6-3

Temple 21, NYU 6
Foil: 6-3
Sabre: 7-2
Epee: 8-1

Temple 17, NJIT 10
Foil: 4-5
Sabre: 8-1
Epee: 5-4

Temple 16, Duke 11
Foil: 4-5
Sabre: 8-1
Epee: 4-5

Temple 19, Cornell 8
Foil: 8-1
Sabre: 5-4
Epee: 6-3

Northwestern 16, Temple 11
Foil: 2-7
Sabre: 5-4
Epee: 4-5