Blue White Illustrated

Andrew Mackiewicz admitted he was feeling a bit of pressure when he began competition in the men's saber at the NCAA championships last month in Waltham, Mass. The sophomore from nearby Westwood had won the title a year earlier, so this time there were ex- pectations. "Last year it was a 'You've got nothing to lose, give your best shot' environment for me," he said. "Being new to collegiate fencing, I prepared as best as I could but didn't have any expectations on how I was going to do. This year I needed to take it touch by touch and let the rest of the competition fall into place. I was very eager to defend the title, and I wanted to prove that my freshman title was not a fluke." He did just that. After going 19-4 in the round-robin competition, Mack- iewicz defeated Princeton's Edward Chin in the semifinals, 15-11, then out- lasted Ferenc Valkai of St. John's, 15-11, in the final. Mackiewicz, who is ranked fourth na- tionally and is aiming to complete in the 2020 Summer Olympics, said winning the title was a "relieving feeling." "Though all the pressure and nerve of having to defend the title came through, it was a great feeling coming out on top," he said. "It's a great feeling to win the individual title because everyone is going after it, but to win it back-to-back is something special." Mackiewicz wasn't the Nittany Lions' only national champion. On the women's side, junior Jessie Radanovich claimed her first title, winning the epee competition with a 15-10 victory over Princeton's Charlene Liu in the final round of the tournament. Radanovich had defeated Mason Speta of Barnard, 15-12, in the semifinal round. "It feels unbelievably amazing, and I can barely even believe it happened," Radanovich said. "I'm very grateful to my coaches and to my incredible team- mates. I would not be close to doing how I did today without their awesome love and support." As a team, Penn State finished sixth overall with 127 points. Columbia won the team title with 174 points, followed by Ohio State (167) and Princeton and St. John's (tie-161). ■ an early-season series with Penn State at the Pegula Arena, have reached the NCAA tournament 11 times in their 56- year history and have been to two Frozen Fours. But the Nittany Lions have shown already that they have the depth to replace key players. This past season, they set school records for goals (140), assists (226) and points (366) despite having lost scoring leader Casey Bailey to the Toronto Maple Leafs in the previous o<-season. Their average of 3.68 goals per game – another school record – ranked sixth in the country. Even in their season-ending loss to Michi- gan, the Lions outshot the Wolverines, 42-39, the 28th time in 38 games that they attempted more shots than their op- ponent. "I'm very proud of where we are right now," Gadowsky said. "We've improved our win total and point total every year, so we're de;nitely doing the right thing step by step. "And I think everybody buys into im- proving not only on the ice and as indi- viduals, but as a team, and improving off the ice in our training and how we represent ourselves. And, you know, our GPA is going up, too. So I think they're doing a lot of good things in all areas, and that's very important to Penn State University and us and how we run our program. … We try to get better at aca- demics, we try to get better at training, we try to get better individually and as a team. And they've been able to do it year after year, so we just want to make sure it continues." ■ MEN'S LACROSSE Nittany Lions stun No. 1-ranked Denver Penn State put an end to a 20- game Denver winning streak, upset- ting the top-ranked Pioneers, 15-10, to capture the 2016 Patriot Cup at SMU's Gerald Ford Stadium on March 26 in Dallas. Junior Dan Craig and sophomore Ryan Keenan scored hat tricks, while senior T.J. Sanders, redshirt junior Matt Florence and freshman Grant Ament each finished with two goals. "I think there are two sides to this," coach Jeff Tambroni said after- ward. "Number one is just being very proud of the way our guys pre- pared coming out of last week's dis- appointing loss [to Massachusetts] and just preparing the way they did; [they] showed great resiliency this week and great discipline through- out the course of today. But there is another perspective to this, and it's that our guys need to keep coming out of this. It was a week ago we lost one game and now we're coming off a very exciting win." Penn State's win was the first over a top-ranked opponent in the pro- gram's history and its first over a USILA top-five team since Feb. 22, 2014, when it defeated fourth- ranked Notre Dame on the road, 8-7. FENCING Two Lions claim national championships RADANOVICH MACKIEWICZ

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