Last Saturday, the Brandeis fencing squads traveled to Boston College to compete in this season's second and final Northeast Fencing Conference meet. The women's team finished the day perfect at 6-0, while the men posted a 2-3 record with victories against Tufts University and Dartmouth College. For the women, the foil team finished with a record of 4-2 against their opponents, while the saber and épée squads each went undefeated. For the men, foil posted a record of 1-4, saber was 2-3 and épée finished at 3-2.

On the women's side, the impressive results mirror their last NFC Meet in November, as the team went 6-0 to claim their second-straight unbeaten NFC crown. The Judges posted decisive victories against five of their six opponents, including a 19-8 win over Dartmouth and a 21-6 triumph of Tufts. Against Brown, the meet's runner-up, Brandeis edged out a 14-13 win, with the decisive blow coming from épée Emma Larkin '11, who finished 11-1 on the afternoon.

While the foil team suffered the only two losses of the day, Coach Bill Shipman was particularly happy with their performance. Vikki Nunley '13 led the team with 14 wins, posting a record of 14-4, and Emily Levy '12 finished at an impressive 13-5.

Other standouts included sabre Anna Hanley '11, who went 10-2, continuing her strong performance this season, which now amounts to only seven losses in 50 bouts. Fellow saber Alex Turner '11 came out strong with a 9-5 record on the day, including a big win against Brown.

Despite their impressive performance in the NFC's, the team has not fared as well in other meets. This, Coach Bill Shipman says, is due to the quality of opponents:

"Most of the teams in the Brandeis Invitational were Division I and more established and just bigger programs," Shipman said. "Basically, just the quality of the opponents was higher at the [Brandeis] Invitational. We didn't fence much worse, I don't think. Maybe we have a little bit more confidence now, especially in foil."

The team can take that confidence into the upcoming Brandeis/MIT Invitational on Saturday, where they will face many of the same teams seen at the last Brandeis Invitational.

Nunley believes Saturday's meet may be their key to the team's success.

"[At the Brandeis Invitational], we lost every single [match], but yesterday, the whole meet kind of re-energized everybody," says Nunley. "We went undefeated, and so going into our next meet, I think we'll be way more confident. This time, we're trying to just do better than last time, which will help us to continue on."

Shipman believes that the team has the ability to compete against many of those Division I squads.

"I think the women's team has gained some confidence, and they're pretty well balanced," he said. "We don't have too many really stand-out stars, but we don't have too many weak spots on the team either. Everybody's fairly good, so it's a nice, balanced team."

On Saturday, the men started the day strong, winning their first two matches against Tufts and Dartmouth 15-12 and 19-8, respectively. They followed with 16-11 and 19-8 losses to host Boston College and Brown University and ended with a tight loss to Vassar College, 14-13.

Like the women's team, the men's squad has had trouble this season beating its tougher opponents.

"The two victories we had were against club teams, and our three losses were against varsity teams," said épée Andrew Travis '10. "We definitely need to start being able to beat varsity teams."

The team posted a 3-2 record at its first NFC meet in November and a 1-3 record at the Brandeis Invitational.

Shipman believes the team needs to perform better.

"We're not fencing as well as we should, especially in foil and saber. . [We're] not fencing with the confidence and the good tactics that we need to," said Shipman. "The foil team is fairly young, and saber is not extremely deep. There's no really heavy guy we can count on for three wins every match. If our best guys are off a little bit, then we're in trouble."

Despite having one junior and no seniors on the foil team, Shipman believes it has a strong potential.

"I think all of them can raise their level enough so that we can get over the hump," he said. "In some of those close matches, like the Vassar match and the Boston College match, we can compete with them. But we'll keep working on it and see what we can do."

The women's team is back in action tomorrow at Wellesley College. After tomorrow, both teams will compete at Brandeis next Saturday in the Brandeis/MIT Invitational, which takes place at 9 a.m.