COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio State men’s fencer Paul Veltrup finished runner-up in epee at the 2023 NCAA Fencing Championships while Jack Price (sabre) also earned First Team All-America honors on the final day of men’s competition in Durham, N.C. Friday. The Buckeye are in fourth place at the national championships with 65 points as a team.
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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 finish in rounds four and five. He defeated LIU’s Mohamed Elsayed Saleh, 14-10, for a spot in the final bout, but fell to Harvard’s Jonas Hansen, 15-10, in the final. The sophomore closed the tournament with a +15 indicator. Ohio State has had a Top 2 finisher in epee for four consecutive years when the Buckeyes were at the final site.
Price secured his spot in the sabre semifinals with a 5-1 record in Friday morning’s round-robin competition. He ultimately fell 15-6 to St. Johns’ Fares Ferjani to tie for third overall. Price, who made his NCAA championship debut this year, earned a +23 indicator in the tournament.
In foil, Edriss Ndiaye and Diego Cervantes earned 6-2 and 4-4 records, respectively, in the final two rounds of pool competition. Ndiaye finished in 11th overall while Cervantes took 12th as the duo earned honorable mention All-America accolades.
Henry Lange also competed in epee for the Buckeyes, finishing 14th overall. Competing in his first NCAA championships after qualifying for the 2020 event that was later canceled, Lange earned a 4-4 record in the final two rounds of competition and scored 91 touches for a +2 indicator in the tournament.
The Format
At the championships, fencers compete in a round-robin format of five-touch bouts. After round-robin, the Top 4 finishers in each weapon will fence in semifinal 15-touch bouts, with winners fencing to determine first and second places and non-advancing fencers being awarded a tie for third place. An institution’s place finish in the championships will be based on points earned by each individual. A team will be awarded one point for each victory by its student-athletes during round-robin competition.
Individual champions will be crowned in men’s and women’s epee, foil and sabre, with team standings determined by combining men’s and women’s results.
Up Next
The Buckeye women compete Saturday and Sunday at the NCAA Championships. Saturday’s competition starts with epee at 9 a.m., followed by foil at 11 a.m. and sabre at 1:30 p.m. All three weapons will start at 9 a.m. Sunday. Semifinal and championship bouts will begin at 1:30 p.m. The six semifinal bouts will be fenced on one strip, sequentially in order of epee, foil, sabre. Finals bouts will follow the semifinals, in the same order. An awards ceremony for the women’s individual champions will follow the finals, along with the awards for the Top 4 teams. Ohio State will have five women in the competition.
