Men – Penn State, Notre Dame, Princeton, Harvard, St. John's, Ohio State, Columbia, Penn, Stanford & Duke
Women – Notre Dame, Princeton, Columbia, Ohio State, St. John's, Penn State, Harvard, Northwestern, Temple & Duke
(scroll down for full release & complete rankings, including all others receiving votes … )
The final CollegeFencing360.com Fencing Coaches Polls for the 2013 season have been released, with several teams changing spots in the men's top-10 while the women had one change at the bottom of the top-10. The PENN STATE men – led by the elite foil duo of Miles Chamley-Watson and David Willette, plus a quality sabre duo in junior All-American Adrian Bak and talented freshman Shaul Gordon (the 2013 Northeast Regional champion) – still sit atop the rankings but slipped a bit from their unanimous status in the previous poll. The Notre Dame men closed the voting margin by 10 points but still ended up 10 points behind Penn State (145-135) in the final poll. The Irish sport thru own dynamic duo in foil, as two-time Olympian Gerek Meinhardt won the 2010 NCAA title while ND teammate Ariel DeSmet bested Chamley-Watson to win the NCAA foil competition as a freshman in 2011.
The final women's ballots produced a near-dead heat for the top position, with NOTRE DAME holding onto the No. 1 spot by a single point ahead of preseason favorite Princeton (145-144). The Irish women feature a pair of 2012 U.S. Olympians – 5th-year epeeist Courtney Hurley (who all compete at the NCAAs in her hometown of San Antonio) and freshman foilist Lee Kiefer – while the Princeton women boast tremendous depth at all three weapons, including saber sisters Eliza and Gracie Stone along with veteran epeeist Susannah Scanlan (who teamed with Hurley on the U.S. women's epee team that claimed bronze at the 2012 Olympics).
The Notre Dame women received six of the 10 first-place votes, with the other four going to Princeton. In the men's balloting, seven No. 1 votes were cast for Penn State, two for Notre Dame and one for Princeton.
Notre Dame remained the only fencing program with both of its squads ranked among the top-2 but Princeton now boasts the No. 2-raned women and the 3rd-ranked men (St. John's is fifth in both the men's and women's polls). Combined voting points (men + women) for the top teams break down as follows: Notre Dame 280, Princeton 266, Penn State 247, Ohio State 227, St. John's 220, Columbia 214 and Harvard 203. Notre ams and Princeton are the only teams that received the maximum 12 qualifiers for the 2013 NCAA Men's and Women's Combined Fencing Championship (March 21-24, at Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio) while the five other teams mentioned above (plus Stanford) have 11 NAA entrants.
The change in the men's top-5 saw Princeton move up from fifth to third, while Harvard now is fourth and St. John's fifth (those teams were tied for third in the previous poll). Current No. 9 and 10th-place team Duke swapped places from the previous men's pool. The only change in the women's top-10 came at the final spot, with Duke bumping up a spot and Penn dropping outside the top-10.
The CF360 voting panel consists of 10 coaches spread across college fencing’s four regions, weighted in relation to the number of competing schools from each region. Accordingly, there are four coaches from the large Northeast Region, three from the Mid-Atlantic/South, two from the Midwest and one from the four-school West Region. Each voter submits a ballot listing a top-15 for both the men and women, with teams listed first receiving 15 points, etc. (for a maximum of 150 voting points).
(CollegeFencing360.com, now in its fifth full season of operation, provides an assortment of exclusive content to the fencing community. CF360 is part of CollegeSports360, LLC – a network of college athletics sites that includes affiliates CollegeBaseball360.com, CollegeSoccer360.com, CollegeSoftball360.com and hub site CollegeSports360.com).
CollegeFencing360 Coaches Poll #4 – Final (March 20, 2013)
MEN (first-place votes – PSU 7, ND 2, PRIN 1)
(school – voting points ... previous polls 3/5 ... 2/6 | initial poll 1/22)
1. Penn State – 145 voting points … (1) ... (1) | (2)
2. Notre Dame – 135 … (2) … (2) | (3)
3. Princeton – 122 … (5) … (3) | (4)
4. Harvard – 115 … (t3) … (7) | (6)
5. St. John’s – 112 … (t3) … (5) | (5)
6. Ohio State – 108 … (6) … (4) | (1)
7. Columbia – 93 … (7) … (6) | (7)
8. Pennsylvania – 79 … (8) … (8) | (8)
9. Stanford – 66 … (10) ... (9) | (10)
10. Duke – 50 … (9) ... (10) | (9)
Also Receiving Votes (panel submits top-15) – Sacred Heart 37, Brown 29, Yale 28, North Carolina 23, Air Force 15, UC San Diego 11, Wayne State 11, NYU 10, Brandeis 7, Johns Hopkins 3 and MIT 1.
WOMEN (first-place votes – ND 6, PRIN 4)
(school – voting points ... previous polls 3/5 ... 2/6 | initial poll 1/22)
1. Notre Dame – 145 voting points … (1) ... (1) | (2)
2. Princeton – 144 … (2) ... (2) | (1)
3. Columbia – 121 … (3) ... (3) | (3)
4. Ohio State – 119 … (4) ... (4) | (4)
5. St. John’s – 108 … (5 ... (6) | (6)
6. Penn State – 102 … (6) ... (5) | (5)
7. Harvard – 88 … (7) ... (8) | (8)
8. Northwestern – 81 … (8) ... (7) | (7)
9. Temple – 69 … (9) ... (9) | (9)
10. Duke – 54 … (11) ... (11) | (11)
10. Pennsylvania – 43 … (10) ... (10) | (10)
Also Receiving Votes – Pennsylvania 43 (10th in all previous polls), Stanford 43, Cornell 30, Brown 22, Wayne State 12, NYU 5, Yale 5, North Carolina 3, MIT 2, Sacred Heart 2, Air Force 1 and Stevens Tech 1.
Please note that only the respective top-10 teams should be referenced as nationally ranked (others should be referenced as "receiving the xth-most votes").
Voting Panel – Michael Aufrichtig (Columbia), Alex Beguinet (Duke; men's poll only), Janusz Bednarski (Notre Dame), Zoltan Dudas (Princeton), Sydney Fadner (Boston College), Nikki Franke (Temple; votes on women's poll only),
Emmanuil Kaidanov (Penn State), Josh Runyan (UC San Diego), Laurie Schiller (Northwestern), Bill Shipman (Brandeis) and Tom Vrabel (Sacred Heart).
Notes: coach Beguinet votes only on the men's poll and coach Franke votes only on the women’s poll; there are 10 voters for each poll – four from the Northeast region, three from the Mid-Atlantic/South, two from the Midwest and one from the West; the amount of voters per region (4-3-2-1) is in approximate ratio to the amount of schools in each region that sponsor varsity fencing – 18 in the Northeast, 13 in the Mid-Atlantic/South, 7 in the Midwest and 4 in the West ... seven of these schools sponsor only a varsity women's fencing team: CCNY, Cornell, Fairleigh Dickinson, Northwestern, Queens, Temple, Tufts and Wellesley.
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