March 19, 2004

Five members of the Wayne State University men's and women's fencing teams have qualified for the NCAA Championships to be held March 25-28 at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass.

Fencers will compete in a round-robin of 24 fencers in five-touch bouts. After the round-robin, the top four fencers in each event will fence direct elimination 15-touch bouts for first, second, third and fourth place. Absolute ties for the seeding will be broken as follows: for positions one through three, by a coin toss; for position four, by a fence-off.

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 for the duration of the championships.

Selected to participate were junior Wojciech Dudek (Krakow, Poland) and freshman Marek Petraszek (Gliwice, Poland) in the men's epee, freshman Bobby Smith (Hillsborough, N.J./St. Benedict's Prep) in the men's sabre, sophomore Anna Garina (Kiev, Ukraine) and junior Anna Vinnikov (Ma'alot, Israel) in the women's epee.

The women's epee will have rounds 1-4 on Thursday and rounds 5-7 starting at 10 a.m. on Friday. The women's gold medal bouts start at 2:30 p.m. on Friday.

Rounds 1-4 for all men's weapons begin at noon on Saturday with rounds 5-7 starting at 10 a.m. on Sunday. The men's gold medal bouts start 2 p.m. on Sunday.

At the 2003 NCAA Championship held in Colorado Springs, Wayne State's women's team placed 12 with the men's/women's combined team finishing 17th. Anna Vinnikov was eighth in the women's epee in 2003.