USA Fencing

(Columbus, Ohio) – Just over six months after knee surgery, 2013 Senior World Team member Aleksander Ochocki (Linden, N.J.) was back on top of the podium on Thursday with a gold medal win at the July North American Cup.

Ochocki, the 2013 Division I National Champion, won his first two bouts by 15-11 scores over Dylis Lewis (Indian Trail, N.C.) and Thomas Kolasa (Princeton, N.J.)

After a 15-9 win over Quinten Burgunder (Chatham, N.J.) in the table of 32 and a 15-5 victory against 2012 Junior World Team member John Hallsten (Sacramento, Calif.), Ochocki defeated a pair of 2014 Junior World team medalists back-to-back to advance to the gold medal final bout.

In the quarter-finals, Ochocki defeated Geoffrey Loss (Laguna Beach, Calif.), 15-8, and went on to win his semifinal against Andrew Mackiewicz (Westwood, Mass.), 15-13.

Ochocki took a 4-0 lead against 2014 Pan American Champion Eli Dershwitz (Sherborn, Mass.) and held onto an 8-4 lead at the break. Dershwitz tied Ochocki first at 10 in the second period and later at 13, but Ochocki finished the bout with two straight touches for a 15-13 victory.

“I lost focus a little bit or Eli just changed a little bit and I had to adjust. I’ve kind of had that happen to me all day, but, instead of over-analyzing, I try to stick to the bread and butter of what got me to this point. Not even just during the day, but in my life and my career,” Ochocki said. “That’s something you kind of train hundreds of thousands of times for until you get comfortable doing it. Eli fenced great, of course, and I really had to finish off strong.”

In the Division I women’s foil competition, London Olympian Lee Kiefer (Lexington, Ky.) held nothing back in pools as she gave up just three touches to a field of six opponents and went on to enter the direct elimination bouts as the top seed.

Kiefer earned single digit victories over her first two opponents in the direct elimination rounds as she defeated Grace Ding (Bolton, Mass.) and Emme Zhou (Lexington, Mass.) by 15-6 and 15-3 scores, respectively.

Kiefer won her table of 16 bout over Elisabetta Bianchin (ITA), 15-10, to advance to the quarter-finals against her 2012 Olympic teammate, Nzingha Prescod (Brooklyn, N.Y.)

In a rematch of their semifinal bout at the Pan Am Championships earlier this month, Kiefer took the win, 15-9.

Kiefer’s semifinal was also against a familiar opponent as she took on Kelleigh Ryan after fencing in the gold medal final against the Canadian at the Pan Ams.

The bout came down to the wire, but Kiefer took the win, 15-14.

Kiefer fenced 2012 Olympian Nicole Ross (New York City, N.Y.) in the final bout and held an 11-2 lead in the second period. Ross went on a 6-3 run before Kiefer closed out the bout, 15-8.

For Kiefer, the win was less about bringing home the gold and more about being the next step in preparation for the Senior World Championships which will be held July 15-23 in Kazan, Russia.

“I feel ok about my fencing today. We just finished a training camp in San Francisco and I feel like I’m in a good place for where I want to be with Worlds coming up,” said Kiefer who took bronze at the 2011 Senior Worlds. “I still have a lot of training to do to get in a little better shape, but I think I’m ready to do well.”

Two athletes from Mission Fencing Center won titles in the National Championship events on Thursday.

Twenty-three-year-old Stuart Holmes (Centereach, N.Y.) won his first National Championship gold medal with a victory in the Division IA men’s foil competition where Holmes defeated Duncan Rheingans-Yoo (Columbia, Md.), 15-9, in the final bout.

Seventeen-year-old Carly Weber-Levine (Old Field, N.Y.) also stood on top of the podium for the first time at a National Championship after her gold medal win over Arabella Uhry (New York, N.Y.), 15-14.

In the senior team competition, the four athletes who will represent Team USA in men’s epee at the Senior World Championships in July joined together to form NYAC Red and claim the National Championship title.

Andras Horanyi (Colorado Springs, Colo.), Jason Pryor (Colorado Springs, Colo.), Jimmy Moody (Colorado Springs, Colo.) and Adam Watson (Richfield, Vt.) earned four straight wins to advance to the gold medal final against NCF 1.

NYAC Red won or tied eight of nine bouts against NCF as Horanyi anchored the squad to a 45-32 win against the NCF 1 team of Simon Jones (Providence, R.I.), Gary North (Englewood, Colo.), Jack Bradford (Erie, Colo.) and Nicholas Campbell-Kruger (Boulder, Colo.)

Peter Westbrook Foundation’s team of Safa Ibrahim (Bronx, N.Y.), Caira Moreira-Brown (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Isis Washington (Parsippany, N.Y.) and Kenyata (New York City, N.Y.) took gold in the senior women’s team epee event.

Although PWF’s lineup was entirely made up of junior athletes, they didn’t give up their lead after the second bout and took a 45-32 victory over top seeded Boston Fencing Club 2 which included Cassandra Bates (Colorado Springs, Colo.), Shawn Wallace (Waltham, Mass.), Stephanie Wolf (Newton, Mass.) and Amy Zhao (Cambridge, Mass.)

Click here to view complete results.

Top eight and U.S. results are as follows:

Division I Women’s Foil July North American Cup
1. Lee Kiefer (Lexington, Ky.)
2. Nicole Ross (New York City, N.Y.)
3. Iman Blow (Brooklyn, N.Y.)
3. Kelleigh Ryan (CAN)
5. Sabrina Massialas (San Francisco, Calif.)
6. Margaret Lu (Greenwich, Conn.)
7. Nzingha Prescod (Brooklyn, N.Y.)
8. Eleanor Harvey (CAN)

Division I Men’s Saber July North American Cup
1. Aleksander Ochocki (Linden, N.J.)
2. Eli Dershwitz (Sherborn, Mass.)
3. Andrew Mackiewicz (Westwood, Mass.)
3. Jonah Shainberg (Rye, N.Y.)
5. Rhys Douglas (Columbus, Ohio)
6. Geoffrey Loss (Laguna Beach, Calif.)
7. Matthew Lewicki (Oakland, N.J.)
8. Eli Polston (Silver Spring, Md.)

Division IA Men’s Foil National Championships
1. Stuart Holmes (Centereach, N.Y.)
2. Duncan Rheingans-Yoo (Columbia, Md.)
3. Brian Swicegood (Saint Augustine, Fla.)
3. Shuya Ishizuka (New York City, N.Y.)
5. Andrew Holmes (Centereach, N.Y.)
6. Tyler Endee (Jackson, N.J.)
7. David Neil III (Jacksonville, Fla.)
8. Michael Antipas (Stony Brook, N.Y.)

Division IA Women’s Saber National Championships
1. Carly Weber-Levine (Old Field, N.Y.)
2. Arabella Uhry (New York, N.Y.)
3. Elysia Wang (Plainsboro, N.J.)
3. Jamie Norville (Oregon City, Ore.)
5. Victoria Zhang (Carmichael, Calif.)
6. Ilana Solomon (Setauket, N.Y.)
7. Lindsay Sapienza (Bardonia, N.Y.)
8. Jennifer Ling (Cranbury, N.J.)

Senior Team Men’s Epee National Championships
1. NYAC Red
2. NCF 1
3. DCFC
4. Woodlands Fencing Academy
5. NWFC 1
6. Schoolhouse Fencing
7. East Bay Fencers Steam B
8. LAIFC

Senior Women’s Team Epee National Championships
1. Peter Westbrook Foundation
2. Boston Fencing Club 2
3. DCFC
4. NWFC 1
5. LAIFC
6. Hills Fencing Institute
7. Nyack Fencing Academy
8. Denver Fencing Center