Yeshiva's fencing team visited the long-awaited MACFA championships, which were held Sunday, March 4th, a weekend that forecasters had predicted to net record snowfall. As it turned out, little snow fell, but the scheduling disruptions proved disastrous for the team. Even with the confusion, two fencers, Steve Mellner and Greg Samuels, overcame both physical and mental exhaustion to finish among the conference's top fencers.
The Yeshiva fencing team traveled by bus to Virginia Tech Univeresity in Blacksburg, Virginia. The drive from the Main Campus to Virginia Tech usually takes some nine hours, so the team had to spend Shabbos in Baltimore, near the midpoint of the exhausting trip. The trouble began when the Saturday night trek to Virginia Tech took longer than expected. At the same time, MACFA team coaches agreed to start the competition an hour earlier, skip all breaks, and accelerate the competition whenever possible, due to the predicted snowfall that was supposed to blanket the Northeast. The coaches hoped to end the all-day competition as early as possible to allow teams in order to travel home ahead of the impending storm.
Yeshiva arrived in Blacksburg very late Saturday night, forcing their fencers to catch only a few hours of rest before they had to head to the Championships.
Yeshiva notoriously starts slowly at competitions, but the team often comes back for the win, a formula that worked to perfection at the previous week's Cornell match. Expectedly, in light of the exhausting weekend, the team did not start off well, and the accelerated nature of competition further exacerbated their problems. Without breaks between matches and with no lunch break to enable the team to regroup, Yeshiva was not able to recover from its slow start and perform up to its capabilities. Overall, they left with a disappointing finish in a year that carried high expectations.
Despite failures in team competition, Yeshiva fencers did fair well in individual contests. Two fencers were able to reach the finals and finish within the Conference top-ten. Greg Samuels, Saber, finished seventh. Steve Mellner, Epee, repeated his feats of two years ago, finishing sixth place and All-Conference - a title that requires a fencer to be situated in the top ten throughout the year and top six at the Championships, marking only the third time that a Yeshiva fencer has twice captured this award.
Immediately after the competition, despite plans to relax and spend the night in Blacksburg, the team boarded the bus and drove home throughout the night. They arrived at Yeshiva early Monday morning, drained by the competition and surprised to see little snow on the ground.