CHAMPS AGAIN: ND Fencing Wins 14th NCAA Championship

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – Notre Dame is back on top of the college fencing world, winning the 14th NCAA team national championship in program history on Sunday morning. The Irish have now won four of the last five team national titles.

The fencing program’s 14th national title represents the most by any team in Notre Dame athletics history. The national title gives the Fighting Irish 36 team national championships in athletics. Notre Dame moves into a tie for second place with Penn State for most fencing national titles in NCAA history.

The title gives Notre Dame head coach Gia Kvaratskhelia his sixth NCAA national championship during his tenure at Notre Dame. The six titles are the most by any Notre Dame head coach in school history, passing the legendary fencing coach Mike DeCicco, who won five titles with the Irish.

The Irish finished with 183 points over the four days, winning the title by 11 over second place Columbia/Barnard (172). Impressively, Notre Dame scored more points than every other program on both the men’s and women’s sides.

Notre Dame wasn’t done collecting hardware after wrapping up the team title in the morning session. The Irish added two individual titles in the afternoon, as Eszter Muhari (epee) and Magda Skarbonkiewicz (sabre) each captured NCAA individual titles.

With the two titles on Sunday and Chase Emmer’s foil individual championship on Friday, ​​the Notre Dame fencing program now has 48 individual NCAA titles. The women have won 26 individual titles in program history. Eight of the individual titles have come from women’s epee and seven from women’s sabre.

Muhari’s title was her second individual NCAA championship, also winning in 2023. The epeeist is the sixth Notre Dame women’s fencer in history to win multiple individual titles. Muhari was perfect and absolutely dominant over the two days, going undefeated in round-robin action with a record of 23-0. 

She carried her form into the semifinal knockout rounds, defeating Princeton’s Leehi Machulsky by a score of 15-2 to advance to the title bout. In the final, Muhari dispatched Columbia’s Tierna Oxenreider by a score of 15-13 to earn the gold.

In women’s sabre it was an all Irish final, as Skarbonkiewicz and Siobhan Sullivan advanced out of pool play and won their semifinal matchups to set up the showdown between the freshmen teammates. Skarbonkiewicz was the No. 1 seed after going 21-1 in prelims while Sullivan grabbed the No. 3 seed with a 16-6 record.

Skarbonkiewicz defeated Princeton’s Alexandra Lee in the semifinal by a score of 15-8 and Sullivan cruised to a 15-9 victory over Ohio State’s Natalia Botello. Skarbonkiewicz came out on top in the final, defeating Sullivan by a final of 15-8 to win the title.

In other action on the final day of the championships, Kaylin Hsieh earned a fifth place finish in epee, posting a record of 16-7 to complete her strong showing. In women’s foil Ariadna Tucker placed 13th and Rebeca Candescu came in at 16th.

STANDINGS

Epee
1. Eszter Muhari, 23-0 (+68)
5. Kaylin Hsieh, 16-7 (+38)

Sabre
1. Magda Skarbonkiewicz, 21-1 (+62)
2. Siobhan Sullivan, 16-6 (+33)

Foil
13. Ariadna Tucker, 11-12 (+8)
16. Rebeca Candescu, 9-14 (-11)

TEAM STANDINGS

1. Notre Dame (183)
2. Columbia/Barnard (172)
3. Harvard (141)
4. Princeton (141)
5. St. John’s (95)