For five days this week the Gymnasium Hall at the University of Jammu has sounded like nothing else on campus — the flat clatter of blades, the buzz of scoring boxes, and a great deal of shouting from children who are, in several cases, nine years old.
The 14th Mini and 8th Child National Fencing Championship 2026-27 has been running there since 23 September and concludes today, 27 September. More than 1,000 fencers from states and union territories across India have competed, in two age brackets: Mini, for under-12s, and Child, for under-10s, boys and girls, across sabre, epee and foil.
It is being organised by the J&K Fencing Association under the aegis of the Fencing Association of India, the national federation recognised by the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.
A bronze for J&K
The host UT's result of the week so far came on day four, in Mini (U-12) Girls Sabre, where Arshiya Jamwal took bronze. The podium:
- Gold — Ali Shahnoor (Rajasthan)
- Silver — Japji Dhillon (Punjab)
- Bronze — Arshiya Jamwal (J&K)
In the Child (U-10) Girls Epee on the same day, Punjab took the top two places through Virasat Kaur Batth and Sukhmanpreet Kaur, with S. M. Asmitha of Tamil Nadu third.
Earlier in the week, the Child Men's Epee went to Gurnimarjot Singh Multani of Punjab ahead of Maharashtra's Shanay Humane and Vivan Balande, while the Mini Women's Foil was won by Anaya Kunwer of Delhi from Sarah Maryam (Telangana) and S. V. Varshika (Tamil Nadu).
Final-day results and the overall medal tally were not available at the time of writing — the closing events and prize distribution fall on the last day.
Three weapons, two age groups
If you are walking in without knowing the sport, the thing to understand is that fencing is really three sports sharing a hall, and all three were on the piste this week.
- Foil — hits count only on the torso, and only with the point. The most technical of the three, and usually where children start.
- Epee — the whole body is target, again point-only. No right-of-way rules, so it rewards patience and distance over aggression.
- Sabre — hits count with the edge as well as the point, above the waist. It is the fastest, and it is the weapon Jammu happens to be best at.
The two age brackets, Mini for under-12s and Child for under-10s, are the bottom of the national age-group ladder that runs up through cadet, junior and senior. A national title at this level does not qualify anyone for anything abroad. What it does is put a fencer into the federation's system — seen by national selectors, ranked, and invited to the camps that decide who gets coaching support later.
Why a U-10 championship is a serious thing
It is tempting to read an under-10 national as a novelty. It is closer to the opposite. Fencing is a sport where the technical base — distance, timing, blade control, the habit of reading an opponent — is laid very early, and where the age-group national circuit is the only place a young fencer gets bouts against people better than the four or five others in their own salle.
For a child fencing in Jammu, the alternative to a championship like this is travel: to Delhi, to Punjab, to Patiala, at a cost most families will not carry more than once or twice a year. Staging it at the University of Jammu removes the single biggest barrier for the local entrants, and it puts national-standard bouts in front of an audience of Jammu schoolchildren who can simply walk in and watch.
Jammu's fencing is not coming out of nowhere
The pipeline behind this is real and recent. Jammu won the overall title at the 20th J&K UT Fencing Championship earlier in 2026. More visibly, the MA Stadium sabre group has been producing genuinely national-class fencers — Shreya Gupta's Commonwealth gold in Lagos came out of it, and Shriya Gupta and Vishal Thapar became J&K's first sabre fencers at the Asian Games this month.
That is the ladder a nine-year-old at the Gymnasium Hall this week is standing on the bottom rung of, and it is unusually short for a minority sport in this UT: club or school salle, district, UT championship, age-group nationals, senior nationals, India.
If you want to start
The route in is the J&K Fencing Association and the sabre coaching at MA Stadium, which is where most of the UT's competitive fencers have come through. Equipment is the usual obstacle — a mask, jacket, glove and weapon are not cheap — but club kit is generally available to beginners, and the age-group structure means an eight- or nine-year-old starting now is starting on time rather than late.
Officials at this week's championship included Advocate Supriya Chouhan, Secretary General of the JKFA, international referee Rashid Ahmed Choudhary, Col Vikram Singh Jamwal of the SAI TIDC, and retired District and Sessions Judge Virinder Singh Bhou.
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