DURHAM, N.C. – Three Stanford women opened competition at the National Collegiate Fencing Championships on Saturday, and helped boost the Cardinal into 15th place as a team with one more day of competition remaining.
Freshman Crystal Qian is 12th in foil, junior Irene Yeu is 12th in epee, and junior Joy Yun is 21st in saber after three rounds of pool competition were completed.
Competition in each weapon begins Sunday at 6 a.m. PT for the fourth and fifth rounds at Duke University's Cameron Indoor Stadium. Those among the top four in each weapon after pool competition advance to the semifinals, which begin at 10:30 a.m. PT.
Yeu pulled off the biggest stunners of the day among the Cardinal fencers, beating Notre Dame's Kaylin Sin Yan Hsieh and Eszter Muhari, who stand first and second in foil with only two losses in 15 bouts apiece.
Yeu went 7-8 overall, but knocked off both Hsieh and Muhari in their eight-fencer first-round pool, each by a 5-4 score. Hsieh is the defending NCAA champion and a 2020 Olympian for Hong Kong, where she was teammates with Stanford grad Vivian Kong. Muhari is a freshman from Hungary and is ranked No. 17 in the world.
Yeu went 4-3 in the first round, 2-2 in the second round, and 1-3 in the third. Muhari's only other loss was to Hsieh, and Hsieh's was to Harvard's Faith Park, who is 10th, by a 1-0 score.
The top 12 in each weapon earn All-America honors, which puts Yeu and Qian right on the bubble. Qian went 8-7 overall in foil. After going 3-4 in the first round, Qian was 4-0 in the second, highlighted by a 5-4 victory over Penn's Sabrina Cho, who stands eighth overall.
In the third round, Qian went 1-3, but her single victory was her biggest of the day, out-touching Columbia's Delphine Devore, 5-2. Devore stands sixth overall.
Yun is 5-10 in saber. She was 3-4 in the first round, and 1-3 in each of the second and third rounds. The second round was especially rough for Yun, who suffered three shutout losses. However, she also earned her biggest victory of the day, beating Penn's Vivian Lu, 5-2. Lu stands fifth overall.
Donghwan Park, Stanford's only men's competitor, placed 17th in the saber on Friday.
As a team, Stanford is just behind Mountain Pacific Sports Federation rivals Air Force in 13th and UC San Diego in 14th. Notre Dame leads, with Princeton second and Columbia third.
