After a long season, the Penn State fencing team begins to gear up for the NCAA Championships. But first, the Nittany Lions must compete in the NCAA Mid-Atlantic/South Regionals. The competition occurs at 8 a.m. tomorrow at Duke University.

The seeds for Regionals have already been determined by regular-season statistics. To get to the NCAA Championships, fencers must have a certain number of points. Forty percent of these points have already been awarded during the regular season, and 60 percent come from Regionals. The summary of these two results determines who will compete in Nationals.

The team is sending a large number of fencers to compete in this weekend's competition, with 11 women competing and 11 men competing.

On the women's side, fencers competing in the women's foil include senior Annekathrin Donath, junior Tamara Najm and freshman Allison Glasser.

In the women's epee, senior Andrea Wine, juniors Megan Lutheran and Case Szarwark and sophomore Katarzyna Trzopek will be representing the Lions.

For the women's saber, juniors Laura Hillstrom and Sophia Hiss, sophomore Ashley Gin Fong Linker and freshman Caitlin Thompson will be fencing.

On the men's side, those competing in the men's foil include sophomore Chun Ming Chan and freshmen Janos Gasparin and Alexander Louton.

Junior Erik Skarbratt, sophomores Dennis Kraft and Arthur Urman and freshman James Moody will be competing in the men's epee.

In the men's saber, senior Marten Zagunis, junior Ian Farr, and sophomores Franz Boghicev and Alexander Vongries will be fencing.

Only two players can compete in Nationals from each team in their respective weapon category, so in the event the Lions have multiple fencers qualify for the NCAA Championships, those with the two highest scores will compete. The others that qualify will be backups in the event those competing are not able to.

Penn State fencing coach Emmanuil Kaidanov is not going to predict how far any of his players will go until Regionals are over.

"At this moment, what can I say? Everything will be determined at Regionals," Kaidanov said.

Although winning a weapon category would be great for any fencer on the team that is not the main goal.

"The task is to qualify [for Nationals]," Kaidanov said. "It depends on what goes on, but if one were to win, great."