Crimson Fencers Start Nationals Today

Three Harvard fencers will try to end the Crimson fencing season on a positive note as they join fencers from around the country in the NCAA Fencing Championships running today through Saturday at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio.

Philippe Bennett, Crimson captain Eugene White, and captain-elect Gordon Rutledge will represent Harvard in the nation-wide competition. Bennett will fence in foil, White in epee, and Rutledge in sabre.

Bennett and White, All-Ivy performers this season, will be making their second trip to the nationals. Rutledge, a strong candidate for All-Ivy commendation until a last-match collapse against Yale, will be making his first trip to the NCAAs.

In recent seasons, Harvard has had little success in the NCAAs. Last year the Crimson finished far out of the money as Bennett, White and sabreman Terry Valenzuela failed to mount any kind of consistency. Two years ago, despite an All-American performance by epee man Geza Tatrallyay, the Crimson finished a dismal eleventh.

The NCAA competition will be the final performance for White, the individual Ivy epee titlist for 1973-74. A year ago White had a miserable time of it at the national championships, failing even to make it through the first day's preliminary round.

Bennett was a little more successful, advancing to the finals with a 7-3 bouting record in the preliminaries, but collapsed in the final two days of competition, losing 18 out of 23 bouts.

Roughly half the fencers in today's preliminaries will advance to the finals. There will be two pools in each weapon and at the conclusion of today's action the top half finishers of both pools in each of the three weapons will advance.

The finals will be run as a round-robin competition with each fencer facing every other fencer at some time during the two days of bouting.