The University of Detroit Mercy men's and women's fencing teams were in Evanston, IL over the weekend, taking on some of the toughest competition in the nation at the 16 team Northwestern University Duals.

Titans head coach Todd Dressell led his team into competition against a daunting field that included teams from all over the country, including Northwestern, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Wayne State, Cleveland State, Lawrence, Stanford, California-San Diego, California Institute of Technology, North Carolina, Duke, Temple, Johns Hopkins, Fairleigh Dickenson and Princeton.

The Titans women's team, despite beginning each match in a 9-0 hole due to not fielding an epee squad, managed to pull out a pair of wins over the weekend. On Saturday the women struggled through their first three matches before scoring a 12-3 victory against Cleveland State in their fourth dual of the day. The foil squad of senior Ashley Colbert (Washington, MI/Romeo), and sophomores Brittany Cook (Burton, MI/Owosso) and Megan McMahon (Macomb, MI/Dakota) scored a 6-3 victory in the match. Meanwhile, the sabre squad of senior Ashlee McLemore (Detroit, MI/Dominican), sophomore Samantha LaFrance (Macomb, MI/Dakota) and freshman Olivia Furnas (Macomb, MI/Dakota) shut out the Vikings, 6-0.

Day two saw the women score another victory, this time topping Lawrence in a closely contested 13-8 battle, and saw the men notch their only victory of the weekend.

Colbert, Cook and McMahon fought their way to another 6-3 victory in the foil over Lawrence. In the women's sabre, McLemore led the charge as she, LaFrance and Furnas powered their way to a 7-2 victory. The women's sabre squad recorded one more victory over the weekend, going 6-3 against Stanford, a match in which the titans suffered a 21-6 setback.

In the men's competition, the Titans had a strong start to the weekend but came up on the short end of an 11-10 decision against the California Institute of Technology. On Sunday the men's team would make it a Detroit sweep of Cleveland State for the weekend as they too topped the Vikings, pulling away to a 16-9 victory.

The men's squad made a strong run at closing the weekend out with another victory, taking Lawrence down to the wire, but were barely nipped by a score of 15-12.

The Titans will compete against many of the same teams they saw at the Northwestern Duals again in their next team competition when they travel to South Bend, IN for the Midwest Fencing Conference Championships at Notre Dame on March 6-7. But select members of the Titans will be in action again before then, traveling to Charlotte, NC on February 13-14 for a USFA Junior Olympics meet.