That's the mark of senior co-captains Chan and Stewart

By Matt O'Keefe

Special to the Gazette

If it weren't for the poisoned tip of Laertes' blade, the fencing bout that forms the climax of Hamlet would have been a relatively harmless one.

But Brindisi Chan, senior co-captain of the Harvard women's fencing team, says the sport has bloodier origins. "People used to solve disputes with duels to the death," Chan says. "People believed that God's hand would guide who was right. The target was the torso, because that's where the vital organs are."

Eventually, Chan says, "people got sick of disputes always ending in death." A new style of bout was introduced, in which the winner was determined by who could draw first blood. In this style, the whole body was considered the target.

In the centuries since, modern rules and equipment have all but eradicated blood and death. Now fencing uniforms are electronically wired so that if a touch is scored, lights and a buzzer go off.

The Harvard women's team fights with two types of weapons, the epee and the foil. In the foil, the target is the torso; with the epee, it is the whole body. Chan duels with the foil, which is the lighter of the two. Her bouts are closely monitored by judges, called directors, who wear blue blazers and gray pants. Frequently, the directors will stop a foil bout to determine if a touch occurred within the legal torso region. Chan's counterpart, co-captain Mallory Stewart, prefers to fence with the epee for this reason.

"The best part about epee is that the directors basically just start and stop the bout," Stewart says. The directors don't have to worry about whether a touch is legal, because, she says, thanks to the electronic scoring device, "even if it hits the toe, it counts."

Long arms and, therefore, height provide a definite advantage in epee bouts. Stewart, at five feet, eight inches, is about average size for her weapon. Bouts for both weapons end after one fencer gets five points, with a touch being worth one point. There is a four-minute time limit, after which the fencer in the lead wins, but Stewart says most bouts don't last that long. If a bout ends in a tie, there is sudden death overtime in which the first touch wins the bout.

This season, the Harvard fencers went 12-1, losing the Ivy Crown to Yale.

At a meet, the team will start eight fencers, four for epee and four for foil. The four epee fencers duel each of the opponent's four epee fencers and likewise for the foil. Last season at the Intercollegiate Fencing Association Championships, the Crimson tied with Yale for the Women's Overall Trophy. Chan described it as "a great victory for us."

Chan began fencing when she was 14 at a YMCA in San Francisco. She was the only girl in the class and took some ribbing from the boys. She thought, "I'll show them. I'll beat them up -- in time." Soon she could beat some, but others she could never beat, because she had signed up with a program that included some of the best scholastic fencers in California. Nevertheless, she came to Harvard more than adequately prepared.

Chan says that after working at the Atlanta Summer Olympics, she was "very inspired" and "wanted to go for the gold" herself. But she doesn't think she wants to devote the next three and a half years of her life solely to fencing. Instead, Chan, an East Asian studies concentrator, is considering working in Hong Kong and continuing fencing and would like to be there when the change in government takes place this summer.

Stewart grew up in North Salem, N.Y., and was introduced to fencing by her older brother. Like Chan, she has considered Olympic possibilities, but currently plans to go to law school after she graduates. An English major, Stewart was art editor of the Advocate, the student literary magazine. Though she is technically a junior, she plans to graduate a year early, she says, to keep pace with her twin sister, who is also a junior at Harvard and is also graduating early.

Stewart says fencing "doesn't seem like an intense involvement, but it is." Fencers have been known to suffer burnout similar to that suffered by tennis players. "When you're losing," Stewart says, "it's totally your fault." To keep things loose, she says, there is horseplay with the blades and the occasional Star Wars reference: "Use the Force, Luke," etc.

Harvard is a part of the Intercollegiate Fencing Association which consists of 12 schools on the Eastern Seaboard. Chan says, "programs are dwindling because fencing is not a high-revenue sport," but indicates that the sport still has a strong hard-core following.