LA JOLLA, Calif. - Adam Campbell-Kruger and Luc Ginestet of UC San Diego have qualified for the National Collegiate Fencing Championships and will be heading to San Antonio, Texas, this week to compete alongside the nation's best.

Both epeeists, Ginestet is a junior from Los Gatos, while Campbell-Kruger is a sophomore hailing from Boulder, Colo. They qualified due to their strong results all season long.

A total of 144 competitors will participate in the National Collegiate Fencing Championships, which will be co-hosted by the University of the Incarnate Word and San Antonio Sports. The Championships include individual events in each of the six weapons (men's foil, men's epee, men's sabre, women's foil, women's epee, women's sabre).

Fencers will compete in a round-robin format of five-touch bouts. After the round-robin, the top-four finishers will fence in semifinal 15-touch bouts, with the winners squaring off to determine first and second places and the losers being awarded a tie for third place.

Rounds one through three of the men's epee competition get underway at 8 a.m. (PT) on Thursday, March 21, at the Freeman Coliseum in San Antonio. Rounds four and five will be contested on Friday, March 22, starting at 7:30 a.m., with the semifinals and final to follow. The opening round will consist of seven bouts, while rounds two through five will be four bouts each.

Including Campbell-Kruger and Ginestet, the men's epee field is comprised of 24 fencers from Air Force (1), Brown (1), Columbia (2), Duke (1), Harvard (2), MIT (1), Notre Dame (2), Ohio State (2), Penn State (2), Pennsylvania (2), Princeton (2), St. John's (1) and Stanford (2) and Yale (1).

Princeton's Jonathan Yergler was the 2012 NCAA champion in men's epee. He qualfied again this year and will defend his title as a senior.

At the 2013 NCAA West Regional, hosted by UCSD on March 9, Campbell-Kruger finished on the men's epee podium, taking third place. Ginestet was seventh among fencers from Air Force and Stanford. At the Intercollegiate Fencing Conference of Southern California (IFCSC) Individual Championships on Feb. 10, Campbell-Kruger was second and Ginestet tied for third.

UCSD won its ninth consecutive IFCSC titles on both the men's and women's sides in late February.

It is the second consecutive year that UC San Diego has sent a pair of fencers to the National Championships. In 2012, Rose Forcier competed in women's foil while Munira Gesner qualified in women's sabre.

For a complete list of 2013 qualifiers, click here.

You can follow the action with live scoring here. ESPN3 will be streaming the men's late rounds and final here starting at 11:30 a.m. (PT) on Friday, March 22. 

-- UCSDtritons.com --