COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio State men’s fencer Paul Veltrup finished second in epee at the 2023 NCAA Fencing Championships while Jack Price (sabre) also took home honors. first team All-America on the final day of men’s competition in Durham, North Carolina on Friday. The Buckeyes are in fourth place at the nationals with 65 team points.
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Men’s competition, day two
Paul Veltrup, at his first NCAA championships, advanced to Friday’s epee semifinal with a 7-1 record in rounds four and five. He defeated LIU’s Mohamed Elsayed Saleh, 14-10, for a place in the final bout, but fell to Harvard’s Jonas Hansen, 15-10, in the final. The second closed the tournament with an indicator of +15. Ohio State had a Top 2 at epee for four consecutive years when the Buckeyes were at the final site.
Paul Veltrup (So., Grefrath, Germany) – Achieved his first place finish in the NCAA; bronze medalist at regionals this year; 2023 First Team All-CCFC and was league runner-up at individual championships
Price secured his spot in the saber semifinals with a 5-1 record in Friday morning’s round robin. He eventually lost 15-6 to Fares Ferjani of St. Johns to place third overall. Price, who made his NCAA championship debut this year, posted a +23 rating in the tournament.
In foil, Edriss Ndiaye and Diego Cervantes were 6-2 and 4-4 respectively in the last two rounds of pool competition. Ndiaye finished 11th overall while Cervantes took 12th as the pair earned an All-America honorable mention.
Henry Lange also competed in epee for the Buckeyes, finishing 14th overall. Competing for his first NCAA championships after qualifying for the 2020 event which was later canceled, Lange went 4-4 in the final two rounds of competition and scored 91 touches for an indicator of +2 in the tournament.
The format
At the championships, fencers compete in a round-robin format of five-touch bouts. After the round robin, the top 4 finishers in each weapon will face off in 15-hit semi-final bouts, with the winners fencing to determine first and second place and non-advanced shooters being awarded a tie for the third place. An institution’s place in the championships will be based on the points earned by each individual. A team will be awarded one point for each victory of its student-athletes in the round robin.
Individual champions will be crowned in men’s and women’s epee, foil and saber, with the team ranking determined by combining the men’s and women’s results.
Following
The Buckeye women face off Saturday and Sunday at the NCAA championships. Saturday’s competition begins with epee at 9 a.m., followed by foil at 11 a.m. and saber at 1:30 p.m. All three weapons begin Sunday at 9 a.m. The semi-final and championship bouts will begin at 1:30 p.m. The six semi-final bouts will be played on a single track, in the order of epee, foil and sabre. The finals fights will follow the semi-finals, in the same order. An awards ceremony for the women’s individual champions will follow the finals, as well as the awards for the top 4 teams. Ohio State will have five women in the competition.
