West Morris Central Fencers Medal at District Championships

The NJSIAA District 1 Fencing Championships were held on Saturday February 2 at Hackettstown High School following a postponement from the earlier date in January due to the winter storm. As with most sports, preparation for athletes is anchored to an event so a date change can favor some competitors if they know how to reset.

The morning session is all about squads for each weapon across the ten schools in the district; separately for men and for women.

Each fencer bouts nine separate athletes and at the end of the morning, wins and losses across the squad are totaled to determine how squads ranked and which squads qualified for the state squad tournament in the end of February.

The stage was set for the men’s foil squad competition to be exciting.

Coming out of the Morris County Fencing Tournament in early January, the foil squad from West Morris Central (WMC) of senior Nate Mange, senior Dusty Howell, and junior Charlie Daum emerged in first place; having just two wins more than the squad from Chatham High School.

On Saturday, it came down again to the final bouts of the morning, and this time Chatham had one more win than WMC. Even though WMC had taken two of the three bouts against Chatham when they went head-to-head, they ended the morning with a silver medal.

Both squads were among the qualifiers for the NJSIAA State Tournament on February 24 at North Hunterdon High School.

As a team, the men’s foil squad helped to push the WMC men’s team to finish overall in the morning to fourth place and qualifying them for the NJSIAA State Team Tournament. They will open up against Montgomery High School on February 6th.

The women’s epee squad led by senior Rachel Hefner finished the morning in fourth place, and they will move onto the NJSIAA State Squad Tournament which will be held for women on February 23 at North Hunterdon High School.

However, for some athletes, their day was not done despite having already fenced nine bouts in the morning. Mange and Daum, both having gone undefeated in the morning pools, along with Howell, and teammate senior Matt Stanton, fencing sabre, moved onto the afternoon individual medal round.

Hefner along with senior Kaitlin Cheung, a foilist, advanced to the afternoon session as well.

All fencers in the afternoon would fence in their respective pool comprised of nine athletes to determine medals but also who would move onto the NJSIAA State Individual Tournament.

Hefner would earn the other individual medal of the day with a bronze medal for epee, with Cheung and Daum taking fourth place. The three fencers qualified for the state individual tournament. Howell and Stanton ended their days in seventh place.

For Mange, the odds were against him on several fronts.

As the district foil champion from 2018, repeating in 2019 as a consecutive year is always difficult. Since 2012, no men’s foilist who has won the Morris County Championship, which Mange did earlier in January 2019, achieved winning the district championship in the same year. Winning the day by going undefeated through another eight five-touch bouts was also very unlikely to happen.

“I just focused on one bout at a time throughout the whole day,” Mange said. “I really never thought about what my record was even in the medal round.”

It wasn’t until the last bout of the entire day when he said to himself that if he wins this bout, he wins the tournament.

When asked about what he did to prepare for the day, Mange said, “I just focused on working hard at the club and practices on techniques that I knew I had to do well.”

Sometimes odds do not matter.

Strong work ethic, dedication, and the right preparation can be the differences for the athlete who can repeat as a district champion, go undefeated (17-0) for the tournament, following onto being a county champion in the same year.

For Mange, those things, along with athletic conditioning, helped him overcome the odds and he ended the day undefeated with the gold medal as the Men's Individual Foil Champion.

[RM1]