A Weekend in Jacksonville at the Carolina Gloves

​Jacksonville, North Carolina not Florida is about a 2-hour drive from here.  It is where Camp LeJeune is located and where the Marine boxing team train.  The Carolina Gloves is a three-day tournament that happens every year.  This year there were about 60 fights total and two rings.  I was excited to get lots of officiating experience with so many bouts.  Elouise Joseph, the supervisor, had two ring captains at the tournament.  I was fortunate to work with Brent Bovell who officiates out of Washington D.C. and is ranked as one of the top 5 officials in the country.  He is also someone who wants to and knows how to mentor people coming up through the ranks.  As I get closer to making my return as a referee, it was nice to work with him and hear his advice.  There was another referee from Annapolis named J.B.  who was an exceptionally good referee and I was happy to be able to see him in action.  Two memorable phrases that Brent used were “crafting a narrative” and “managing the chaos”.  While the first one seems a little odd in regards to refereeing, what he means is that no point deduction or call should come as a surprise to the boxers or their corner.  The second phrase refers to slowing things down in a fight if necessary so you can remain in control of a fight to ensure that it is safe and clean.  J.B. and Brent did a great job in both these regards.  He gave firm cautions to fighters and handled some tricky situations beautifully.  It was great to see such pros in action. 

​There were so many great fights during this tournament.  One of our fighters, Jonathan Best, competed in the 203+ Elite division.  Although he didn’t get the decision, he had a great fight. There were fighters from all over and the last two fights I judged on Sunday were super intense and amazing.  There was a left-handed fighter from Philly named Frank Garner who had two tough opponents (one on Saturday and one on Sunday).  He was such a smooth, calm fighter who absolutely broke his opponents down.  He is going to be someone to watch.  One disappointment that I have experienced since coming back to boxing is the number of female bouts has not increased.  Out of the approximately 60 fights at the Carolina Gloves only about five were female.  However, on the West Coast in Pacifica, CA another 3-day tournament was taking place called The Beautiful Brawlers, which was all female and included women from the U.S., Canada, Taiwan and the U.K.  Blanca Gutierrez has done an amazing job at building up this tournament over the years and now she is running it twice a year.  I would really like to bring high quality amateur boxing shows to Raleigh and the seed was planted in my head that I should do that.

One really nice surprise at this tournament was I ran into Coach Michaels.  He used to be the head coach for the Marines and helped me along with the army coach, Kevin Greene and Coach Gloria Peek in the first woman’s national tournament in Scranton, PA in 1997.  I had to attend the tournament without a coach because it was too expensive to fly my coach out there for a week.   Coach Michaels wrapped my hands beautifully before each fight and I remember his calm demeanor.  Between him, Coach Greene and Coach Peek I was really blessed to have such amazing people in my corner at my first Nationals.  I had not seen Coach Michaels since that tournament…25 years ago!  He said to me as we embraced, “You had skills!”   and I said to him, “We are old people now!”  It was nice to catch up with him and know I will probably run into him more often as he lives in Jacksonville and coaches out of Ten Rounds of Boxing.  Boxing continues to fill up my soul in so many different ways and I am grateful to the people who have been in my corner and mentored me on this boxing journey.

Coach Michaels at the Carolina Gloves