Having returned from her peripatetic fencing tour of Boston and Dallas and submerged herself in the hectic first week of spring-quarter classes, sabreuse Laura Decker remarks of the previous week that it "was certainly exhausting—three days in a row was a lot of fencing!"
She acknowledges that she didn't fence as well as she might have hoped on the first day of the NCAA championships. "I was a little overwhelmed," she says, "since it was by far the first major competition I've been to."
Unfortunately, she says, she faced fencers who should have been her easiest opponents on the first day, when she was not at her best. "I actually fenced really well toward the end of the second day," she says.
Indeed, she came within one point of defeating Rebecca Ward, a 20-year-old from Duke University who at one time held all five world championship titles simultaneously, and who took the bronze medal in both individual and team sabre at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Decker had faced Ward last year at a Northwestern University tournament and had been hoping for a rematch.
Although she didn't win her match with Ward, Decker did defeat a contender from Ohio who actually went on to a victorious round over Ward.
The rigors of the NCAA nationals behind her, Decker fenced her way to a 10th-place finish at the North American Cup tournament in Dallas.
"Overall it was a great experience," she says. She hopes to qualify for the NCAA championships again next year, when, she adds, "I'll have the benefit of another year's fencing experience."
Written by Michael Farquhar