Not actually a Columbia fencer

As we’ve been doing lately, here’s a weekly roundup on what’s been going on around campus on the athletics side. Sports connoisseur Max Rettig reports on the fit half of Columbia below.

Foil Plans

Columbia sophomore Jackie Dubrovich won a gold medal in women’s foil at the Bratislava Junior World Cup this past Saturday. In the process, she foiled the victory plans of 142 other fencers. Fencing head coach Michael Aufrichtig shared some words of excitement following Jackie’s victory: “It is very exciting to have a program that not only has some of the strongest college fencers, but some of the best fencers in the world!” Other top performers included CU freshman Sara Taffel and sophomore Margaret Lu, finishing in seventh and fifteenth place respectively.

In other fencing news, Mason Speta took the 14th-place spot out of 187 competitors in the Bratislava Junior World Cup in women’s epee. Geoffrey Loss and Chris Ahn took 23rd and 29th in the Sosnowiec Junior World Cup for men’s sabre.

Around Columbia Athletics

Because Bwog can never encourage a team enough:  as many of you know, men’s basketball lost to Michigan State, now the No. 1 team in the nation. Columbia led for more than half of the game, and the Lions would have pulled off a major upset had it not been for two shot-clock violations in the waning minutes, reportedly caused by Michigan State fans. Spartan Denzel Valentine poured credit on the Lions, saying “All credit to Columbia. They came out and played their heart out” (CBS Sports). Bwog is a fan.

Roundups

• Women’s basketball lost to Lafayette 82-95
• Men’s soccer lost to Cornell 0-3
• Men’s swimming and diving took the close home opener against Yale, 153-147; the men defeated Army, 182.5-115.5.
• Women’s swimming and diving defeated Yale 185-115 and Penn 166-134
• Volleyball honored its seniors, but lost its final match to Dartmouth at home, losing in three closely contested sets.
• For the second consecutive season, No. 8 Men’s XC took a runner-up finish at Northeast Regionals, scoring 78 points to finish behind Syracuse (14) and win an automatic bid to NCAA National Championships this coming weekend.
• Jacob Sienko took 6th place overall in 30:24.3, leading a trio of Columbia top-10 finishers. Good luck men!
• Congrats to David Najem, CC’14, midfielder, on being honored as the Ivy League offensive player of the year by College Sports Madness.

Epic sporting via Shutterstock