While the rest of the tri-campus is trying to keep up with the ever changing news concerning the recent presidential election, the three junior captains in the Baraka Bouts women’s boxing club are preparing for the upcoming 22nd annual Baraka Bouts tournament.
Notre Dame has over 500 recognized clubs including this one. That begs the question, how did the captains of this year find out about it?
South Bend native junior captain Emma Hazel, who is a double major in political science and Spanish supplemental with a minor in theology recalled, “I stumbled upon the Instagram account (@barakabouts) the summer before my freshman year and immediately knew I had to be a part of this club. As someone who was an athlete throughout high school, this club offered me an opportunity to continue to be a part of a team in college”
All the way from Brooklyn Heights, New Jersey, junior political science major and Italian minor captain Tess Kesler joins the team to help lead the way. Kesler found out a different way.
“I actually first found out about it from my [resident assistant], who was a captain for the club, and I thought she was the coolest person ever and she only had super great things to say about it, so she convinced me and a couple other girls in my dorm to go to the first practice, and I was pretty hooked from then on.”
As all three are captains, the club also recognizes them as having even more specific roles. These roles tie into the captain's life in a way that can better the club.
“My role specifically is [that] I am the missions captain of the club. And our club, though it is a women’s boxing club, it has a huge fundraising center and we each and every year have a fundraising goal, and all of the money for that goes towards the Lakeview and St. Joseph's Hill Schools in Uganda,” Hazel described. “My job as the missions captain is every Monday we have a ‘Missions Monday’ during practice, and either myself or a guest — a priest or someone who has studied at one of these schools — will tell all of the boxers about the missions.”
A computer engineering major and minor in engineering corporate, Layann Wardeh takes a different approach as the practice captain.
“Every captain has a role in the club, and my role specifically is a practice captain and doing the weekly duties or making the plans for the week,” she said. “Me and one of the other practice captains — her name is Kim — Kim and I plan eight practices every week, and so we are planning to work out for six of them, and we’re also planning the technique for each of the day. And we also work with Coach Nate [Walker] on what specific technique we want to do that specific day.”
While the bouts often get down to the nitty gritty, it is always important to do it in style.
“My role this year was apparel. So that was pretty much over the summer, designing all of the merch for the team” Kesler commented.
While the audience sees all of the fights and the outcomes of the work put in throughout the entire season, the captains know the amount of stress that the tournament can cause, especially being new to the scene.
“I think that the junior captains like to be a lot more available in practice to help with anything… helping the girls outside of practice or grabbing a meal. Especially being an on-campus junior captain, being able to grab meals with boxers and having that meal plan and being in their dorms especially is a huge advantage,” Hazel said.
“Besides my role as the practice captain, we kind of work with [the] girls, holding mitts for them or helping them with movement or bags — stuff like that” Wardeh added.
The final and arguably most important aspect leading up to the big tournament that will be taking place over the next few weeks is the factor of staying focused when entering the ring. Hazel takes a different approach than others.
“In a nutshell, I just take into consideration that the night of the tournament is a very noisy environment, and I try ahead of time to try to find ways to center myself in loud places — ways to be fully present and completely focused on the task at hand. So I have an unorthodox method where I try to avoid listening to much music leading up to it.”
Kesler goes a different route and focuses on more of the psychological aspect of the anticipations.
“I do the same exact warmup that we do at practice everyday and just try to get in the same mindset, and then also just being confident in my own abilities because a lot of the time people can doubt themselves in the ring, but you really just have to fall back on the practice that you’ve done throughout the season. I think that’s the main thing, just being confident in what I am doing.”
With this, the captains are prepared as the quarterfinals begin on Monday, Nov. 11 at 7 p.m.
