Katey Woodruff, Staff Writer–

​The Denison women’s fencing team won the Eastern Women’s Fencing Conference tournament on Feb.16, hosted by Drew University. Their first place win was the first in the history of the team. There were also many individual and squad wins including 1st place foil squad, first place epee squad, and second place sabre squad.

Starting as a club 13 years ago, the group became a varsity sport in 2019. The team has steadily climbed in the conference standings the last four years, going from seventh place to fifth to third before winning this year.

“They really bought into committing to winning, to giving it all they had. From the start of the tournament to the end they were full intensity, full throttle the whole day,” Coach Peter Grandbois said. “It’s a great group of women, they’ve done a great job. It’s more about them and how hard they’ve worked. Anytime you have a new sport at Denison, at any school, it’s hard, so these women took a risk to come here and train and be part of a new team and make it a champion team.”

The 15-member team practices five days a week for two to three hours each day. Denison fencing is part of both the Eastern Women’s Fencing Conference, which is for division III teams, and the Central Collegiate Fencing Conference, which is for midwestern schools of any division. Following their EWFC win, the team had a tournament for the CCFC, where they came third overall, beating out powerhouse division I schools.

“It was honestly a really satisfying experience, like all of our hard work inside and outside of practice finally paid off. Also making history is always fun,” Velma Hall ‘26 said. “Beating someone who is a lot better than me and has a lot more experience is great.”

Hall helped the foil squad take home first place and has become a finalist for the conference’s Woman Athlete of the Year. Claire Anderson ‘28 led the epee squad to their victory with a 13-2 record.

“It felt great to be able to contribute to the win, especially when knowing that this was our team’s first conference win,” Anderson said. “Everyone put their best in and it was just great to see good results from our effort.”

Last semester was assistant coach Hector Florencia’s first with the team. He began fencing when he was 8 years old and played with the Mexican national team before joining the team at Ohio State University. Florencia hopes that the school can continue to win their conference championships; attracting more fencers for the team and, eventually, being able to get players to national teams and the Olympics. 

“I was excited when I got this job because I knew it would be fun to come to a division III school and recruit fencers that maybe aren’t super high level, but develop them to be and have that challenge of having someone who isn’t very high experience beat someone who is,” Florencia said. “We won and it shows all of the things they have done in the past. I am excited to help contribute and pay tribute to everything that my coaches have done.”