Notre Dame Wins Inaugural Women’s Three-Weapon NCAA Team Title

SOUTH BEND, Indiana — The University of Notre Dame won the inaugural women’s three-weapon team national championship on Friday, overcoming a strong push from Columbia University to take the team crown.

Notre Dame won the national championship last year, too, but that was the final year of a combined women’s and men’s team championship. This time, the women had the stage all to themselves and took full advantage, as the Fighting Irish’s six-woman epee, foil and saber squad outscored Columbia by 102 total wins in 5-touch bouts to 99. Princeton finished third with 71, followed by Harvard with 69.

The result opened a new chapter in NCAA fencing history. Before 1990, the NCAA sponsored a women’s team championship based on foil only. From 1990 through 2025, women’s and men’s individual results were combined to determine one overall team champion. In 2026, the NCAA began awarding separate men’s and women’s three-weapon team championships, making Notre Dame the first program ever to win the standalone women’s title in the modern era.

At the NCAA Championships, fencers compete both for team glory — each victory in a 5-touch bout gives a team one point in the standings — and for individual honors, with the top four fencers in each weapon advancing to a four-person bracket where 15-touch bouts decide the champion.

Those individual titles gave the championship an unmistakably international feel.

In women’s epee, Eszter Muhari of Notre Dame successfully defended her NCAA title and claimed the third championship of her four-year college career. Muhari, a senior from Budapest, Hungary, also won in 2023 and 2025, finishing her Notre Dame career as the sixth woman in NCAA history to win three or more individual titles.

She joins an elite group: Olga Kalinovskaya of Penn State (four), Lee Kiefer of Notre Dame (four), Anna Garina of Wayne State (three), Alicja Kryczalo of Notre Dame (three) and Rebecca Ward of Duke (three).

In women’s foil, Jessica Guo of Harvard won her second NCAA championship, adding the 2026 title to the one she earned in 2024. Guo, a junior from Toronto, Ontario, finished first in the round-robin standings at 20-3 before winning her semifinal and final bouts. The Canadian now owns two NCAA foil championships before the end of her junior season.

In women’s saber, Natalia Botello of Ohio State captured the national championship after leading the field with a 21-2 record and a +56 indicator in round-robin fencing. Botello, a junior from Mexico, delivered a milestone for the Buckeyes: this is Ohio State’s first-ever NCAA women’s saber individual title and the program’s first NCAA individual women’s crown since Eleanor Harvey won women’s foil in 2016.

That made the trio of women’s individual champions a fitting symbol for both college fencing and the sport at large: Muhari from Hungary in epee, Guo from Canada in foil and Botello from Mexico in saber. On a weekend built around a historic first for NCAA fencing, the podiums reflected just how global the sport has become on American campuses.

National Champion: Eszter Muhari (Notre Dame)

2nd: Hadley Husisian (Princeton)

T-3rd: Ketki Ketkar (Cornell)

T-3rd: Nicole Xuan (Columbia/Barnard)

5th: Nicole Feygin (St. John’s)

6th: Tierna Oxenreider (Columbia/Barnard)

7th: Kyle Fallon (Notre Dame)

8th: Gloria Klughardt (Ohio State)

National Champion: Jessica Guo (Harvard)

2nd: Carolina Stuchbury (Columbia/Barnard)

T-3rd: Zander Rhodes (Columbia/Barnard)

T-3rd: Lucia Zhang (Harvard)

5th: Kristina Petrova (Yale)

6th: Josephina Conway (Notre Dame)

7th: Ariadna Tucker Alarcon (Notre Dame)

8th: Samantha Catantan (Penn State)

National Champion: Natalia Botello (Ohio State)

2nd: Magda Skarbonkiewicz (Notre Dame)

T-3rd: Alexandra Lee (Princeton)

T-3rd: Siobhan Sullivan (Notre Dame)

5th: Tamar Gordon (Columbia/Barnard)

6th: Dagny Johnson (North Carolina)

7th: Elaine Lu (Northwestern)

8th: Honor Johnson (Princeton)