Ediva Zanker doesn’t feel like she has to prove anything to anyone within the boxing world.

“It’s the outsiders that know nothing about boxing that think, ‘Oh, you’re so small. You’re a girl, how do you fight?’” said Zanker, a senior magazine journalism major. “Within boxing I’m given an equal opportunity. That’s why I love fighting.”

Zanker is a member of the Syracuse University Boxing Club, which is composed of Syracuse University students, staff and faculty. This past weekend, Syracuse competed in the United States Intercollegiate Boxing Association National Championships, held at the University of Michigan. The team sent three male and three female boxers to the tournament, marking the first time SU has sent women to a national competition.

“There is so much focus on the fact that there’s guys and girls on the team, when the focus should be on the fact that we’re a team of good fighters,” Zanker said. “We interact like any other team. We care about each other. We push each other.”

The team practices three times in the Archbold Gymnasium during the week and twice on the weekend, always for two hours.

In the months leading up to the national championships, Zanker would often go straight from class to Archbold’s basement, where she would do eight rounds of shadow boxing and jump rope. She’d then put on her mitts and perform what she calls a burn out, which consists of her repeatedly punching a punching bag until she has no energy left.

Zanker said she doesn’t think twice about her gender when she’s fighting in the ring.
Gender equality in boxing is still a relatively fresh concept — it wasn’t until 2012 that women’s boxing was included in the Summer Olympics.

But Ty Cothren, who also competed over the weekend, says the Syracuse team is doing what it can to accelerate that process.

“There’s no leeway for gender here,” said Cothren, who graduated from SU last spring. “A lot of us have strong feelings about gender equality and everyone is pushed to their limits when we train … At base level we are entirely differently built animals, but boxing is about willpower and heart, which knows no gender.”

Fittingly, Syracuse boxers of both genders — one woman and two men — qualified for Saturday’s finals. Samantha Usman, Tom Smith and Tony Chao, who is also The Daily Orange’s art director, each represented SU in a championship bout.

Usman, a junior physics major, finished second in the women’s flyweight division. She said the national championships felt like an emotional rollercoaster, citing her wins in the quarterfinals and semifinals but also her loss in the finals.

The former coxswain for her high school men’s rowing team, she has past experience in being the minority gender, which she says helps her in boxing.

“I’d say I’ve grown pretty accustomed to it at this point,” she said. “Though I’m sure other girls would find the gender gap alienating.”

Head coach Phil Benedict said he doesn’t allow gender to affect how he coaches his fighters.

“I base it on their skill level, their movement, their size,” he said. “It’s based upon the person and what type of fighter they’re developing to be. It doesn’t have anything to do with gender. It’s about ability. It’s all about ability.”

For all of SU’s boxers, the 2014–15 season is now wrapping up following the national championships, which Benedict described as the team’s “last hurrah.” The head coach said he plans to encourage his fighters to stay in shape during the offseason.

Benedict said he expects the club will begin training in September for its 2015–16 season. Zanker and the other graduating seniors have already watched their collegiate boxing lives come and go, but Smith, a junior chemistry major, and Usman both plan to resume fighting in the fall.

Smith, who captured a title belt Saturday in the heavyweight division and is the team’s captain, said that ability is ever-present in Syracuse’s female boxers.

“They all have tremendous amounts of heart,” Smith said. “Even when they’re outmatched technically, facing a better fighter, they still go in there and give it their all. It takes a great amount of heart to do that.”

Published on April 12, 2015 at 9:13 pm

Contact Michael: mdburk01@syr.edu