 |
 Senior Anna Garina won her third NCAA Championship on Sunday. |
March 25, 2007
Madison, N.J. - Wayne State University senior epeeist Anna Garina (Kiev, Ukraine) earned her third NCAA title with a 15-13 win over Notre Dame's Kelley Hurley in the gold medal bout on Sunday afternoon.
Garina, who had a 14-0 record during round-robin competition, compiled a 7-2 mark on Sunday morning to earn the top seed for the semifinals. Garina defeated fourth-seeded Anastasia Ferdman of Penn State 15-10, while Hurley defeated third-seeded Reka Szele of St. John's. Garina avenged a 15-11 setback to Hurley in a semifinal bout of the Midwest Fencing Conference championship on March 3.
Garina won the NCAA title in both 2004 and 2005, while finishing second last year. She is the first WSU female fencer to be a three-time NCAA Champion, and only the third in school history (Greg Benko won three consecutive men's foil titles in 1974-75-76; Ernest Simon won three men's foil titles in 1978-80-81).
Garina is the first women epeeist in NCAA history to win three national titles and only third female in any weapon with three NCAA titles (Penn State's Olga Kalinovskaya won four straight women's foil 1993-94-95-96; Notre Dame's Alicja Kryczalo won three straight women's foil 2002-03-04).
Junior Justyna Konczalska (Innsbruck, Austria) placed ninth in the women's epee to earn Honorable Mention All-America honors. Konczalska compiled a 13-10 mark in round-robin play with a +14 mark (95-81) in touches.
Junior Kasia Kuzniak (Konin, Poland) placed 19th in the women's sabre after recording a 6-5 mark on Saturday before having to withdraw due to an injury. She was unable to compete in her final 12 round-robin bouts.
Freshman Ann Bartoszewicz (Macomb, Mich./Eisenhower) placed 24th with 3-20 mark (-61 in touches/45-106).
Wayne State placed eighth in the NCAA Championship with 76 victories (33 by the men and 43 by the women) in the combined championship. Penn State won with 194 wins and was followed by St. John's (176), Columbia (169), Notre Dame (160), Ohio State (144), Harvard (123) and Penn (104). Rounding out the top 10 were Stanford (9th with 67) and Princeton (10th with 64).
This marks WSU's fourth consecutive year in the top 10 and the eighth-place finish was the highest since a seventh-place finish in 1992.
