Three Long Island fencers take home gold at Jeff Wolfe ROC

The high school season may be over, but Long Island’s top fencers are “en garde” throughout the year, competing in a number of regional and national tournaments.

While recent tournaments have taken many of these athletes as far as Texas, Virginia, and Oregon, this weekend’s event was much closer to home.

Fencers from around the country (and three from overseas) came to Rocky Point to compete at the Jeff Wolfe Regional Open Circuit event at Mission Fencing Center.

Three Long Island students took home gold medals at the tournament, which doubles as a qualifying event for this summer’s national championships and was named after longtime Brentwood coach Jeff Wolfe.

Hewlett-native Sam Moelis won gold at the weekend’s first event, the Division I men’s foil tournament. Moelis, a sophomore at Lynbrook High School (which does not have a fencing team) competes for Brooklyn Bridge FC on the club level and is an “A” rated fencer by the United States Fencing Association.

Moelis is also ranked first in the country in foil in the under-17 age group, and is eighth and 15^th in the under-20 and Division I groupings, respectively.

Later on Saturday, Whitman junior Thomas Ferrante won gold in Division II men’s epee. Ferrante has a “C” rating from the USFA and won silver in epee at this season’s Suffolk county championships. Ferrante fences on the club level for Mission FC.

On Sunday, Ward Melville junior Ilana Solomon won gold in Division I women’s sabre. Solomon earned a national “B” rating with the victory and is ranked in the top-60 nationally in the USFA’s under-20 sabre grouping. Solomon also tied for third in Division II sabre on Saturday.

Solomon headlined another strong performance from Ward Melville’s dominant sabre team. Fellow junior Carly Weber-Levine took second in Division I sabre on Sunday and senior Kacy Charpin tied for bronze in the event. Solomon, Weber-Levine and Charpin are also teammates on Mission FC.

Centereach’s Andrew Holmes tied for third in Division I foil and Whitman’s Michael Ruotolo tied for third in Division II foil.

Other Long Islanders with strong performances over the weekend included: Half Hollow Hills’ Charles Wells (fifth in D-I foil), Commack’s Chantel Yang and Samantha Abbott (11^th and 12^th respectively in D-I epee), Commack’s Emmett Woytovich (12^th in D-II epee), Ward Melville’s Angela Zhang (eighth in D-II foil), Ward Melville’s Dan Solomon (fifth in D-I sabre and sixth in D-II sabre), Whitman’s Alexandria Alpy (eighth in D-II epee), and Great Neck South’s Kody Horiuchi (ninth in D-II foil).