DURHAM, N.C. – Stanford junior Donghwan Park closed his season with a 17th place finish at the NCAA Fencing Championships on Friday at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
Competing in the men's saber, Park went 4-4 in the fourth and fifth rounds to finish with a 9-12 record in the pool over two days.
Park, a three-time NCAA qualifier, finished his season with a 59-26 (.694) record. Park was the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation and NCAA West Region champion.
On Friday, Park earned victories over Penn State's Clement Perrier, Duke's Terence Lee, Boston College's Inigo Rivera, and Yale's Jack Pan. The victory over Pan came by a 5-3 score and was significant because it prevented Pan from placing third in the pool and thus forced him to face No. 1 Luke Linder of Notre Dame in the semifinals.
Park, in fact, beat two of the semifinalists – Pan on Friday and Ohio State's Jack Price on Thursday.
On Saturday and Sunday, three Stanford women will compete -- freshman Crystal Qian (women's foil), junior Irene Yeu (women's epee), and junior Joy Yun (women's saber). All are MPSF champions and Qian and Yun are NCAA West Region champs.
This is the third NCAA appearance each for Yeu and Yun, who each earned All-America honors as freshmen.
In the NCAA Championships, there are 24 competitors in each division. Fencers compete in a six-person round-robin format of five-touch bouts, with the top four finishers in each weapon advancing to the 15-touch semifinals. The first two days of the NCAA schedule were devoted to the men and the final two for the women. Twenty-eight schools are represented.
On Saturday are the first three women's rounds of the epee (6 a.m. PT), foil (8 a.m. PT), and saber (10:30 a.m. PT). On Sunday, the final two rounds begin at 6 a.m. PT for all three weapons, followed by the championship bouts at 10:30 a.m. PT.
Yun is 33-7 (.825) this season, Qian is 37-11 (.771), and Yeu is 44-18 (.710).
Yeu was fifth in women's epee, Yun seventh in women's saber, and Park 11th in men's saber in 2021. Last year, Park was 12th. Stanford was 12th in the combined men's and women's team scoring last year.
A live feed of semifinal and final bouts will be available at 10:30 a.m. PT on ESPN+. Semifinals and finals, along with other championships highlights, will air on ESPNU at 11 a.m. PT on April 6.
