Nicole Ross (far right) led a young US squad to a gold medal against rival Italy in the Junior Women's Foil Junior Team Championship in Belfast, Ireland. Ross headed up a team that included Cadet champion Nzingha Prescod and cadet silver medalist Lee Kiefer and alternate Epiphany Georges. (photo courtesy FencingPhotos.com)
Italy started out the match strong with Alice Volpi taking a 5-2 lead over Prescod to start the match. Italy would a 2 point lead going into the 6th bout of the team match.
Nicole Ross pulled ahead at the beginning of the 5th team match vs. Martina Balti and extended that to a four point lead. Valentina De Costanzo next faced off against Kiefer and brought Italy back into the match, tied at 31.
Ross dominated the next match against Volpi, scoring 9 points to the Italian's 3 to set up a 40-34 score for the US anchor, Prescod, to take into the final bout. Prescod carried on the momentum of the set up bout and went on a 4-2 run to bring the bout to match point at 44-36. The Italian anchor, Batini, would go on a 4-0 run, but simply had too much ground to make up and Prescod scored the deciding point to win 45-40 with 1:09 remaining in the match.
Final Point in the 2009 Junior Women's Team Foil event.
In the Men's Sabre event, the US team defeated the 11th seeded French team 45-41 before dropping to #3 seed Korea 45-37. Korea would go on to take the silver with a 36-45 loss to Hungary in the gold medal match. The US Men's Sabre team ended up 7th.
US Women's Foil Cadre:
Top Row: Buckie Leech, Mike Pederson, Nicole Ross(New York, N.Y.), Nzihgha Prescod(Brooklyn, N.Y.), Epiphany Georges(Brooklyn, N.Y.), Lee Kiefer(Versailles, Ky.). Front: Simon Gershon, Margaret L.C. Lu(Greenwich, Conn.)
