DURHAM, N.C. – The Notre Dame fencing team closed out the 2026 ACC Championships Sunday inside Cameron Indoor Stadium with a pair of individual women’s titles and a third place tie for the men. Chelsea Delsoin was named Women’s Most Valuable Fencer following her sabre individual title while Zoe Kim claimed gold in the individual epee title.
The top-seeded Irish men started the team portion off strong, taking down Stanford 20-7 in the opening round. The Irish were 8-1 in epee and 7-2 in foil against the fifth-seeded Cardinal.
Duke got the best of the Irish in the second round in a bout that went down to the final point of the session. Even though Notre Dame was 8-1 in epee, the Blue Devils were able to hold off the late Irish charge to win 14-13. Duke went on to win the team title.
Notre Dame fell in the third round to North Carolina 12-15, outscoring the Tar Heels 5-4 in epee but coming up short 4-5 in sabre and 3-6 in foil.
The Irish bounced back in the final round of the evening, taking down second-seeded Boston College 14-13 to secure the third-place tie. Notre Dame bested the Eagles 5-4 in both foil and sabre to close out competition. With the win, the Irish tied North Carolina for third.
Women’s Individual
The Irish women, after dominating the team competition yesterday evening en route to the 10th ACC title in program history, claimed two individual titles Sunday morning as Zoe Kim won the epee title and Chelsea Delsoin secured the sabre title. In total, Notre Dame had six fencers on the podium Sunday.
As a team, Notre Dame has won every women’s individual title but just one since the 2016 season not including the 2021 championships, which the Irish didn’t compete due to Covid precautions.
Magda Skarbonkiewicz (sabre) and Hailey Eyer (foil) both secured silvers while Meredith Palmer (foil) and Felicity Sebastian (epee) are both bringing bronze medals back to South Bend.
Kim came into the competition the fourth seed, and beat Sebastian in the semifinals 11-10 to advance. The freshman eventually took down Nicole Milewski of North Carolina for her first career individual title.
Delsoin was the second seed in sabre, right behind teammate Skarbonkiewicz, who she eventually met in the final round as it was an all-Irish final. It came down to the final point in the bout between the Irish teammates, as Delsoin won her first career conference title 15-14. Siobhan Sullivan placed fourth after falling by just one in the bronze medal bout as Notre Dame claimed three of the top four spots in sabre.
Eyer was the third seed in the foil competition and took down fellow Irish teammate Emma Griffin 15-12 in the opening round. After knocking off Ruoxi Sun of Stanford, Eyer battled against Stanford’s Arianna Cao, the two-time defending NCAA champion, but fell short 10-15.