Ridge Fencing's 2024-25 Season Is In Full Swing

BASKING RIDGE, NJ — The Ridge High School Fencing team's season for 2024-25 is in full swing.

Somerset County Championships

Ridge Fencing hit the ground running with the first tournament of the season held right before the holidays. The Somerset County Championships, hosted by Bernards High School, had six teams from across the county participate.

On the girls' side, the foil squad (Maya Zamlynny, Yasemin Ocak, Eunice Kim) claimed 1st place. The epee squad (Ashley Maschhoff, Claire Muisener, Heidi Stefandl, Claire Zhang) took second place and the sabre squad (Alexandra Mendieta, Kaavya Padhi, Emerson Rever, Leah Stefandl, Sienna Yurkovic) took fifth place. With all the weapons combined, the girls took 4th place overall.

The Ridge boys' sabre squad (Tristin Orthmann, Ben Schuchman, Tadas Vilemaitis) took first place. The foil squad (Girish Arul, Siddharth Malhotra, Christopher Zheng) and the epee squad (Ethan Zhang, Jeremiah Murphy, Christian Mulry and Sidharth Burgula) both finished in 3rd place. With all combined weapons scores, this was enough to secure 1st place overall.

For the individual competition, both Ethan Zhang (epee) and Tadas Vilemaitis (sabre) had strong performances and finished in 2nd place in their respective competitions. Christopher Zheng finished in 3rd place in foil. Sophomore Maya Zamlynny defended her title from last year and once again finished as individual champion in girls foil, while Yasemin Ocak placed third in foil.

Cetrulo and Santelli Tournaments

Both the Ridge boys and girls fencing teams notched top ten finishes in what has been touted as the "World’s Largest High School Fencing Tournament."

The boys competed in the Cetrulo tournament on Saturday, Jan. 11, at Drew University in Madison with 55 teams in contention for the title. The foil squad (Shresh Bollapalli, Girish Arul, Christopher Zheng) battled for an impressive 6th place finish and helped the boys team to a 10th place finish overall.

Notable individual performances were Junior Reid Kokenge, perfect on the day with 14/14 wins on the "A" epee strip and Sophomore Christopher Zheng going 12/14 on the "C" foil strip.

The girls took to the strips for the Santelli tournament on Sunday, Jan. 12, with 52 teams participating.

They took 9th place overall, powered by a strong 10th place finish from the foil squad (Maya Zamlynny, Yasemin Ocak, Eunice Kim, Aria Chahal).

Top individual performances on the day included Maya Zamlynny going 12/14 on the foil "A" strip and Eva Chen with 11/13 wins on the sabre "B" strip.

— Submitted by Ridge High Fencing Association