For better or for worse, boxing is a sport where the goal is to beat the pulp out of your opponent. It\u2019s a little surprising to know that, at one time, NC State students were putting on the gloves.<\/p>\n
Imagine you\u2019re sitting ringside in the old Thompson Gymnasium \u2014 a decade before the construction of Reynolds Coliseum \u2014 watching your favorite NC State fighter wailing punches on his Tar Heel opponent. 3,000 fans, piled on top of one another, fill the tiny venue, cheering for every hit.<\/p>\n
Such an atmosphere almost seems too good to have existed.<\/p>\n
These days, the only fisticuffs between NC State and Carolina students take place on the concourse of Carter-Finley Stadium. But it was the reality lived by NC State students in the 1930s. The NC State boxing team only lasted from 1931 to 1941 and was unable to claim a team title, but it embodied NC State\u2019s historic identity.<\/p>\n
On an individual level, a few fighters found success. Most notably in 1932, sophomore Charlie Garner won the Southern Conference belt for the 145-pound weight class, led by head coach Lt. C.H. Elmes.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoxing was successful and popular because it came out of the Army tradition, [and NC State] was fully a military training school during World War I,\u201d said NC State sports historian Tim Peeler. \u201cNC State still had a lot of ROTC ties coming into the \u201920s, all the way into the \u201930s when the Great Depression hit. It was a military style school.\u201d<\/p>\n
Relating to the military, a big part of boxing\u2019s appeal also contributed to its downfall: its violent nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cCollege life and life in general, from the 1880s to the 1940s and to the 1950s, was just brutal,\u201d Peeler said. \u201cThere were a whole lot of things going on. People got sick and died. There wasn\u2019t the same kind of medical treatment, training facilities or treatments or things like that. Boxing has always been a brutal sport. You\u2019re basically just beating people until one over the other submits. So there were a lot of safety concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n
Every sport needs a venue \u2014 boxing\u2019s was Thompson Gym, the first ever on-campus arena at NC State, and it was filled with surprises.<\/p>\n
\u201cThompson Gym opened in 1925. It was a multipurpose facility, so it had gymnastics, it had lots of other things going on in there,\u201d Peeler said. \u201cIt had a pool in the basement, had a firing range down in the basement as well. But it was not particularly set up for varsity sports, for having a lot of spectators in there. There were only about 3,200 seats in the arena.\u201d<\/p>\n
Contributing to the chaos was an elevated indoor track, similar to what exists in Carmichael Gym, that would\u2019ve been a great place to watch a game.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople would be up there watching the games or watching a match up there,\u201d Peeler said. \u201cIt was so close to the action that there were places on the court where you could not shoot a jump shot from, for fear of hitting that track \u2026 There were big windows that people could sneak into and try to get there. It was very much a small gym that was not designed to host big events.\u201d<\/p>\n
The biggest events included matchups against Duke, North Carolina and other local schools \u2014 an important feature of collegiate athletics during that time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe schools all reacted to what each other did \u2026 Whatever Carolina did, State did. Whatever State did, Carolina did and Duke did. That\u2019s why we have these natural rivalries with Wake Forest, just 20 miles north of us, at that time. Those were the core of everything that was going on \u2026 You had to be as local as you could be, mostly, you\u2019re dependent on the train travel.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the team disbanded before the season in 1941, it was due to a few factors. Growing negative attitudes about the brutality of the sport, a lack of success and Duke disbanding its program just down the road all played a role.<\/p>\n
But NC State boxing had one last hurrah. Fighters from the defunct varsity program entered into an intramural tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cMuch interest has been aroused on campus in intramural boxing because of the elimination this year of varsity and freshman intercollegiate teams,\u201d was written in the February 7 issue of Technician.<\/p>\n
By the end of it, writers observed, \u201cState\u2019s own golden-glovers put on a show that was the best intramural event this term.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For better or for worse, boxing is a sport where the goal is to beat the pulp out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-277868","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}