NOTRE DAME, Ind. – Donghwan Park is in All-America position after the first day of men's competition at the National Collegiate Fencing Championships at University of Notre Dame's Castellan Family Fencing Center on Saturday.
Park holds ninth place in saber after 15 bouts, compiling a 9-6 record. He is among five Stanford men competing Saturday and Sunday. Each weapon has a field of 24.
Also for Stanford, Lucas Orts (7-8) is 16th in foil, Noah Matricciani (5-10) is 18th in saber, Draper Dayton (5-10) is 19th in foil, and Aidan Kung (4-11) is 23rd in epee.
In the team scoring, which combines men and women, Stanford is 12th. Haley Koo, the only Cardinal woman, was 18th in women's foil on Friday.
Park's biggest victory came against Harvard's Mitchell Saron, who stands fifth in the saber standings. The Park-Saron bout was the last one of the first round, and the seventh of the day for each. Park outpointed Saron, 5-4. In their first bout, Matricciani beat Park, 5-3. Park was 11th at nationals as a freshman last year.
Orts, who was 10th in foil in 2019, opened with a 5-4 victory over freshman Dayton. Orts' biggest victory was a 5-1 triumph over Penn State's Arwen Borowiak, who is seventh. Among Dayton's victories was a 5-4 victory over Air Force's eighth-place Nestor Levin.
Kung earned two victories over fencers in the top half of the standings – 10th place Justin Haddad of Columbia, and Harvard's 11th-place Jonas Hansen.
On Sunday, the fourth and fifth rounds, which is eight bouts total for each fencer, begin at 6 a.m. PT for all three weapons. The championship bouts for the top four placers begin at 10:30 a.m. PT.
The overall season records for each of Stanford's men, in order of winning percentage: Orts, 53-22 (.707); Matricciani, 38-22 (.633); Park, 32-21 (.604); Dayton, 26-23 (.531); and Kung, 33-42 (.440).
