Evanston was the center of the fencing world for a weekend.
Northwestern racked up three ranked wins at the first-annual Schiller Duals as Ryan Fieldhouse played host to 15 different fencing programs over the weekend.
The strong showing on the strip from the purple and white capped two days of pageantry as Northwestern honored both its stellar senior class and Wildcat legend Laurie Schiller.
The school announced last week that it was renaming its annual Northwestern Duals after its former head coach, who amassed over 1,250 wins during his 38 years in Evanston before his retirement at the end of the 2016 season. Schiller retired as the second winningest coach in college fencing history and the winningest head coach in the history of Northwestern athletics.
Coach Schiller’s invitational lived up to the high standard set by its namesake as Evanston welcomed five programs ranked in the preseason top-10 across the men’s and women’s divisions. That’s without even mentioning the No. 5 ranked hosts.
Northwestern opened its weekend with two wins against elite opponents, besting No. 11 Temple 15-12 and No. 8 Cornell 19-8 all before 10:30 a.m.. The ‘Cats dropped only one discipline across the two matches as Northwestern sabre began their weekend with a 5-4 defeat against Temple before bouncing back with a 6-3 win against Cornell.
Coach Zach Moss’s squad would fall in their next two matches against UC San Diego and No. 2 Notre Dame. A 16-11 loss to UCSD marked Northwestern’s first ever loss to the burgeoning powerhouse in Southern California. While the Tritons are not ranked among the top 16 teams in the country, they do — like Northwestern — have wins against No. 8 Cornell and No. 11 Temple on their resume.
Northwestern responded with a fury. The hosts dispatched with Farleigh Dickinson 26-1 and the “we’re just happy to be invited” Wheaton Lyons 27-0 to finish day one.
The ‘Cats stayed hot throughout day two. Northwestern rode an 9-0 performance from its epeeists on the way to an 18-9 W over No. 14 Stanford, before triumphing over 20-7 over Incarnate Word and 22-5 over Air Force in its first three matches of the day.
Northwestern finished 4-0 on Sunday after a rematch with Farleigh Dickinson. The Knights fared a little better the second time out, stealing three points in the epee, but NU had to feel more than okay with a 24-3 smackdown.
Select Northwestern fencers will be back in action in two weeks for the Junior Olympics in Charlotte, while the entire team will take to the strip at the CCFC Championships on February 22 in Detroit.