This past weekend saw Lawrence’s fencing teams compete at the Central Collegiate Fencing Conference Championships (CCFCC). The CCFCC were held in Detroit over Saturday, Feb. 22 and Sunday, Feb. 23 with seven schools in attendance.
Fencing is scored through duals with three different weapons: saber, foil and épée. The men’s team scored second place in saber, third in foil and fourth in épée for an overall third-place finish. The women’s team scored fourth place in saber, fifth in foil and sixth in épée for an overall fourth-place finish. Ohio State won both championship titles.
Standouts included sophomore Jayna Davis, who was sixth individually in saber; first-year Jack Kropp, who was also sixth; and sophomore Eli Freyre de Andrade, who took eighth. There were several other top ten finishes in individual events, including Cristobal Perez Fourcade (ninth place, saber), Clarence Murzyn (tenth place, saber), Mateo Wilkins (ninth place, foil) and Will Martin (tenth place, foil).
While at championships, Lawrence fencers wore shirts to protest current anti-transgender policies in the NCAA. In response to President Donald Trump’s executive order on gender identification, the NCAA has banned trans women from competing on women’s sports teams. The shirts featured “Lawrence Fencing” and the fencing logo in the colors of the transgender flag (blue/white/pink) on the front, and a quote from Marsha P. Johnson — a prominent queer rights activist in the 1960s-1970s, on the back. The quote reads: “No pride for some without liberation for all.”
Iris Pierce, a junior foil fencer from Austin, Texas, gave a comment through email about the protest. “It was peaceful and not outright announced or acknowledged by the tournament organizers,” Pierce wrote. Even so, she was happy to report that “many people offered their support and respect for what we were standing for.
“The grief and anger I have found in the wake of Trump’s attacks on trans people, and the NCAA’s cowardice, has felt heavy,” Pierce stated. She commented on the larger implications of the policy, saying that this “is about more than the sport itself.” She continued that “this is about [transgender people’s] right to take up space and to exist with pride for who we are as we grow into our identities, just as everyone else does in their own way.” She continued that “science supports our rights and in sports like fencing that are more about mental strategy and skill than physical strength, it is important to prioritize equitable inclusion.”
Pierce concluded that “this weekend has shown [her] that while the NCAA has caved to the Trump administration’s orders, the fencing community (and more widely the community of collegiate sports in this country) stands with trans athletes.”