Brandeis fencer Eugene Vortsman blogged about his experience at the national championships this past weekend. The Judges tied for 17th place overall at the meet.

There are few words that could describe the emotions one feels when walking into the venue with NCAA banners hanging everywhere you look. This is the moment of recognition for all the work you've done during the year. Coming from Brandeis, a small Division III school in Waltham, Massachusetts, we have less to lose then the powerhouse schools. We are there to represent our school and ourselves as best we can while many of the other schools have the pressure of needing to win the championship.

Fencing at the national level is different from many other sports because of the vast amount of international fencers participating. Many of them are recruited here from world championships and national teams of foreign countries. This makes the competition even harder because most of us have not met them in competition on the national level before college. They also bring with them different fencing styles that most of us are not accustomed to. They also bring with them a vast amount of experience and skill from their international victories.

The competition is set up so that every participant competes against every other top fencer in the country. There are 24 qualifiers from all over the country representing four regions. There is no easy school. There is no easy bout. And finally, there is no break. The best analogy for the NCAA fencing competition is to compare it to a sprinting marathon. There is no time to recover from a bad bout or a devastating loss. You have five minutes to catch your breath, analyze your last bout, and prepare for the next one.

My goals were the same as those of everyone else. I wanted to win the whole thing. But more realistically, my desire was to get all-American. My teammate was honored with that title by fencing incredibly well and finishing the tournament in 7thplace. The top twelve are given that honor and unfortunately I finished 14th.

I started fencing when I was 14, which is very late compared to the rest of the participants in the national championships. "Three Musketeers" is the novel that sucked me into the world of fencing. I knew that I wanted to fence from the first parries. Nothing has gotten in my way, and now it serves as an outlet for all the stresses of my life. I put on that mask and everything else melts away, leaving only a goal to defeat my opponent.

Fencing is not the most popular sport and therefore has a generally small community. This size allows the fencers to be exposed to people from all over the country while travelling to national tournaments. For me, I fell in love with the sport when it allowed me to see my own potential to be a well-known name on a national level. As a kid, I played many various sports and the Olympians that we saw on television were similar to Gods.

When I started fencing in one of the national hubs for fencing in New York City, I met fencers and suddenly they were real. It was possible for me to see my own potential, and this fueled my fire. Fencing is a beautiful sport frequently compared to "physical chess" because you need to plan ahead and figure out your opponent while still being very physically active. Fencing is an individual sport that forces you to place the blame only on yourself for losing but also gives you the opportunity of taking all the credit for winning.