By:Tom Jordan
RVCers bring home 1 gold and 2 silver at Empire State Games
The summer Empire State Games were as good as precious metals for village residents Allisa Mendelsohn, Roland Varriale and Matt Nolan. Mendelsohn won a gold medal, and Varriale and Nolan earned silver medals at this year's competition.
After two straight years of taking home the bronze medal in scholastic women's fencing, 15-year-old wunderkind Mendelsohn earned her first gold medal at upstate Herkimer Community College, finishing with a 10-0 tournament record.
She captured the gold with a defeat of Rochester's Jocelyn Svengsouk, a friendly adversary, on July 26.
"You see the same faces all the time in fencing," Mendelsohn said. "I know she's beaten me before."
After earning a bronze medal in Division II competition at the National Fencing Championships in Sacramento, Calif. during the first week in July, Mendelsohn has been at the top of her game. She is ranked 37th overall in the nation, 16th among fencers under 20, and fifth among those under 17.
She has been the pride of South Side fencing now for years, earning her third varsity letter last fall. After her first season, a year in which she was the school's lone representative at fencing meets, she had a couple of teammates last year. She likes it better that way - it deflects some of the attention - and is looking forward to the season starting again in the fall.
Mendelsohn is enjoying some time away from competition by taking college preparatory classes at Yale University. Photography and improvisational comedy are her courses of choice, but fencing is never far from her heart.
In addition to competing, she practices at least three times a week throughout the year with Tonya Adamovich, a member of the 1972 U.S. Olympic fencing team. The schedule can be demanding enough that Mendelsohn craves some down time, but the foil keeps calling to her.
"When I'm away from fencing, I miss it," she said. Though her mother, Susan, has framed some of her most impressive medals and hung them on a wall at home, Mendelsohn takes little time to appreciate them, instead focusing on her next opponent.
"I'd like to just throw [the awards] in a box someplace," she said.
Like Mendelsohn, Varriale, 17, has been to the Empire State Games before, having placed tenth and fourth in his first two tries in the scholastic men's javelin. This time, he took home the silver.
Varriale, a student at Archbishop Molloy, heaved the javelin a personal-best 48.44 meters, or about 159 feet, to take second place in a field of twelve. Varriale had his sights set on a gold medal, but he tweaked a groin muscle trying to get a little extra on a throw, hindering his final attempt. He was not disappointed at all.
"I thought I could win the gold. I know I can throw that thing farther, but I'm happy. It's a good feeling to win something, after all of that hard work it took to get to this point," he said.
Varriale's success in the javelin afforded him the opportunity to relax and watch some of the other events. "When you're competing, you're usually so focused on what you have to do that you don't get much of a chance to be a fan. You never get to see a rugby or fencing match. But I was able to see some of the other games this year. I got to see some of my friends get their medals too," he said.
Nolan was an Empire State Games rookie this year. But the high school senior, a three-sport star at South Side, knew what he could do and didn't let his unfamiliarity deter him from turning in a performance to remember in the decathlon.
"I had a sense I'd do well," said Nolan, a member of high school track team. He also plays on the basketball and soccer teams at South Side. He earned All-Conference honors and was a captain of the soccer team last fall.
"I was going after the gold and I might have had it, except that I didn't do what I needed to do in my two strongest events - javelin and discuss. If I'd done what I'm capable of in those two, I might have won the gold."
Leading the field after the first day of competition, Nolan slipped to fifth on the second day. A third place finish in the javelin (37.10 meters) and fifth place in discuss (21.46 meters) helped drop him from the lead.
Nolan shouldn't hang his head. First-place finishes in the 400-meter dash (52.38 seconds), shot put (11.76 meters) and the long jump (6.25 meters) earned him the silver medal in his first Empire State Games.
