North senior wins sectional title
By Bob Nuse, Sports Editor
Joe Behnke isn’t your typical championship fencer.
The West Windsor-Plainsboro High North senior no longer fences outside of school. The three months he fences for the Knights are the extent of his competitive season. But that hasn’t stopped him from rising to be one of the top epee fencers in the state.
On Saturday, Behnke won the epee title at the District II sectional tournament. He helped the Knights qualify for the state tournament, which will begin on Wednesday, as one of the top 16 teams in the state.
”He is a senior who has been with me for four years,” WW-P North coach Gail Kedoin said. “He does not fence club. He has worked hard and he has made so much progress just fencing in the three months of the high school season. He has so much talent. When people at the tournament heard he did not fence club and only fenced the three months of the high school season, they could not believe it.”
There was a time when Behnke also fenced for a club. But he’s recently spent more of his time honing his skills as a kicker in football, which leaves him just enough time to be a part of the high school fencing team.
”My main goal is to play football in college and I am trying to focus in that,” said Behnke, the first North boy to win a district epee title. “That is my main goal. But I still want to try to do as well as I can in fencing. I fenced outside of school for two years, but not anymore. I have a really good coach at school and she has helped me a lot.”
Behnke was not the only fencer from the Packet area to enjoy a successful day on Saturday. The girls’ team from Montgomery also finished in the top four and earned a berth in the state tournament by finishing second at the district tournament.
The Cougars’ Anjali Ramaswamy finished second as an individual in the sabre and advanced to the individual state finals. Sarah Caputo was fifth in epee and also advanced to the state finals. Both the sabre and epee squads finished in the top four to advance to the state finals in the squad finals.
The West Windsor-Plainsboro South boys sabre squad placed first at the district tournament. The squad consisted of juniors Alex Guo and Stephen Yang, as well as sophomore Howard Chang. Guo and Yang also qualified individually.
In addition to Behnke qualifying for the state individual finals, the Knights’ Hamad Masood also qualified with a fifth place finish in epee. The girls foil squad qualified for the state finals, while individually, Anjali Baliga placed first and qualified for the state epee championships. Gentley Smith also qualified with a fifth-place finish.
For the North boys, who are seeded 13th and will fence at Ridge on Wednesday, qualifying for the state team tournament is just the latest achievement for an improving team.
”They all fenced well the whole day,” Kedoin said of her team. “So it was a good all-around effort by everyone. Last year the sabre squad only won two bouts and this year they had seven wins. None of them had been to the districts before. This was the first time for all of them. And two of them just started fencing sabre this year. But they had almost four times as many wins as we had last year and every bout we won helped contribute to us getting to the Sweet 16.”
Behnke will get a chance to continue fencing in the state team tournament, the individual tournament and the squad tournament. He earned those spots with an outstanding performance on Saturday.
”I thought I had a chance to do well,” he said. “My main goal going into it was just to win each bout. I was not looking ahead. I just tried to go bout-by-bout and touch-by-touch. Our team has done well this year. We’ve already won more matches than we have the last three years combined.
”We have more experience now, which is a big difference. The seniors we have now all started as freshmen when the team was first beginning. Everyone has continued to improve.”
Behnke is one of those fencers that continue to get better. Even if he has limited the time he puts into the sport.
”My main focus is still to try to kick in college,” he said. “If I keep fencing it will be more as a hobby. I enjoy it, but it is not my main focus.”
That certainly comes as a surprise to those who saw him on Saturday, when he established himself as one of the top epee fencers in the state.

