WHEN it comes to fencing, Jennifer Sancroft is a formidable and passionate ambassador.

Despite having arrived fairly late to the sport at 18, she has gone on to prove her early detractors wrong and battle against limited funding to achieve her goals.

The 27-year-old from Denny will compete in the 2014 Commonwealth Fencing Championships in Largs tomorrow, representing Scotland in sabre. On the eve of competition she is in buoyant mood and gunning for a place on the podium. "I'm ranked in the top 10 within the Commonwealth and would like to go beyond my seeding to get an individual medal," she says. "I'm hopeful of a team medal too."

For Sancroft, the challenges have been many. As she lists them - funding struggles, being written off for lack of experience, juggling work and training - her manner is of a salmon defiantly swimming upstream.

"There is definitely a perception that if you haven't started fencing by the time you're 14, it's too late and you've missed out," she says. "That was certainly an attitude I found from some areas of the sport. Our [Scottish] national coach once told me he didn't think I would make it, so he wasn't sure there was much point in me investing too much time in it.

"Fortunately, I quite enjoy that type of challenge and took it on. It feels good to have proved him wrong. I've done two seasons with the British team now and am hoping to qualify again next year."

This will be Sancroft's second successive Commonwealth Championships having competed in Melbourne in 2010. She first discovered fencing at an end-of-term fun day in her teens. With no clubs in her home town of Bishopbriggs, however, it wasn't until Sancroft went to Strathclyde University that she began training under the tutelage of David Rollo, who remains her coach today.

"I've always done loads of different sports throughout my life," she says. "Football, dancing, gymnastics, badminton, basketball - you name it, I've tried it."

Fencing won her heart. It also led her to another love. Sancroft and her husband Glenn met at a competition in Aberdeen eight years ago, discovering they shared a coach, albeit at different Glasgow clubs.

"We were friends for a year before we started going out and got married just over 18 months ago," she says. "We have always trained together and definitely push each other on. We both represented Great Britain at senior level for the first time in 2012 and although it meant travelling a lot and perhaps not seeing each other as much as we would have liked, we understood each other's focus and drive."

Sancroft is part of a 30-strong Scottish team that includes Georgina Usher, a 10-time British senior champion and winner of four Commonwealth medals, and Mhairi Spence, a four-time world champion in modern pentathlon and who took Commonwealth fencing bronze in 2006.

Both Usher and Spence will compete in epee. Keith Cook, a five-times Commonwealth medallist, will captain the men's foil side.

Glenn, 25, will join his wife competing in sabre. He was a team bronze medallist at the 2010 Commonwealth Championships and took silver at the junior championships four years earlier.

They are regular sparring partners, fitting in their training around his day job as a joiner and hers working for a recruitment consultancy. "It can be 8pm at night and if I say: 'I'm going to gym', I'll hear no complaints," he says. "There are no lazy days."

According to Sancroft - Mrs that is - the biggest misconception about fencing is that it is viewed as a "posh boy's sport". Equally, the level of fitness required of a top-flight fencer often prompts surprise.

"A lot of people think it is purely about mental strategy," she says. "It is a very cerebral sport and you need to be switched on, but you are moving up and down a 14m strip maybe five, six or seven times before someone lands the first touch. I remember the very first open competition I ever won. I was by far not the best fencer, but I was the fittest.

"The girl I beat in the semi-final was a Commonwealth fencer for Australia and all I did was run her up and down the piste until I tired her out to the point where she physically couldn't hit me, but I still had enough left in the tank."

Her secret weapon? Thighs of steel. "I lift ridiculous weights in the gym," Sancroft laughs. "I can squat 100kg and only weigh 68kg myself. I've been told I've got one of the longest lunges in the game and that is because my legs are so strong. One of my main tactics is to use my fitness and strength as much as possible, then try to marry that up with my technique."

Sancroft previously worked as regional co-ordinator in sports development for JudoScotland. Having seen the success of Team Scotland's judo contingent at Glasgow 2014 with 13 medals - six gold, two silver, five bronze - she would love to see the fencers emulate that.

"A full-time training programme like they have at the JudoScotland National Training Centre in Ratho would be fantastic," she says. "The guys who won those medals were training next door to me every single day. I was regularly in the gym with them which was a great motivator.

"I've had messages from Commonwealth gold medallist Sarah Clark and Frania Gillen-Buchert, who works for JudoScotland but competed in squash at the Games, wishing me good luck. Having that support is so nice."

The 2014 Commonwealth Fencing Championships (cfc2014.org) take place in Largs from November 10-15.