Posted: Feb 15, 2022

Blue Fencing Earns NFC Academic Awards; Elena Vona Named Second Team All-Conference

Wellesley fencing ears NFC Academic Awards (Frank Poulin Photography)

WELLESLEY, Mass. – Wellesley fencing first year Elena Vona (Millstone, N.J.) has been named to the Northeast Fencing Conference (NFC) Second Team All-Conference and eleven student athletes have been named to the Academic All-Conference Team. As a team, Wellesley earned Academic-All Conference honors with a combined cumulative GPA of 3.3 or higher (on a 4.0 scale).

Vona finished the season with a NFC record of 22-4 (84.62%) in epee to earn the Second Team honors. Her best performance of the 2021-22 season came at the Vassar invitational where she compiled a 15-3 record and helped the Blue to an 8-0 sweep.

Seniors Yasemin Ersen (Newton, Mass.) and Sam Wolstenholme-Britt (Cary, N.C.) each earned the Academic All-Conference award for the second consecutive season. Ersen will graduate in the spring with a degree in Neuroscience and Wolstenholme-Britt in American Studies. Classmate Panya Tang (Toronto, Ontario), who graduated in the winter in Economics, earned the honor for the second year as well.

Five juniors were named to the list for back-to-back seasons starting with Clara Brotzen-Smith (Houston, Texas) who is majoring in Biological Sciences. Joining is Brooke Dodrill (Boca Raton, Fla.) who is an Anthropology major, Alexia Gilioli (New York, N.Y.) who is Chemistry major, Kimberley Kimura (Los Angeles, Calif.) who is an Economics and Physics double major, and Sejal Saxena ( Chappaqua, N.Y.) who is a Psychology major.

Earning the honor for the first time is sophomores Edith Po (Bernardsville, N.J.), Nerine Uyanik ( San Jose, Calif.), and Candace Xie (Jiangsu, China). Po is majoring in Computer Science, while Uyanik is focusing on Cognitive and Linguistic Science and Xie in Data Science.

Wellesley fencing will next compete at the EWFC Championships on Sunday, February 20 starting at 9:00 AM.

Founded in 1992, the Northeast Fencing Conference's mission is to support intercollegiate fencing in and around New England. The league organizes a round-robin schedule of dual meet competitions for the fencing programs at all member institutions. The member institutions are a mix of both NCAA varsity programs and student-organized club programs.