{"id":918361,"date":"2026-10-06T16:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/918361\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T16:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T16:20:10","slug":"whanganuis-isabella-parkes-and-martons-xavier-mcginniss-win-national-boxing-titles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/918361\/","title":{"rendered":"Whanganui\u2019s Isabella Parkes and Marton\u2019s Xavier McGinniss win national boxing titles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cBut we still got two [golds] out of three. It\u2019s exciting. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis was Izi\u2019s fourth national title<\/a> and, hopefully, the first of many for Xavier.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March, Parkes represented New Zealand<\/a> at the World Boxing Youth Futures Cup in Bangkok, Thailand.<\/p>\n

The Whanganui association includes clubs from Whanganui, Marton and Bulls.<\/p>\n

Tofa said Canterbury and Auckland dominated the medal table, with about 230 boxers taking part.<\/p>\n

\"IsabellaIsabella Parkes with coach Mike Foley after winning her fourth national title. <\/p>\n

\u201cAccommodation was pretty full everywhere, even the campgrounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne Auckland association stayed in Marton, and our coach Brendon Lawrence saved the day for Palmerston North by putting them up at his house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tofa and her husband Eddie Tofa, the association\u2019s president, run Rivercity Boxing Gym.<\/p>\n

They put on the national amateur championships<\/a> in Whanganui twice in 2022, due to Covid-19 rescheduling.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur coaches were fantastic help, but a lot of it was our family,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe had grandchildren running to send the results to the announcer, who was our daughter-in-law. The teenage grandchildren ran the tuck shop.\u201d<\/p>\n

The association organised a corporate boxing night in August to raise funds for the nationals. <\/p>\n

At the time, Eddie Tofa said \u201ceverything is double\u201d compared to the 2022 nationals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need two rings this time, and two doctors. Each doctor is $6000 by themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sandra Tofa said the couple planned to step back from running big events, which required a lot of work \u201cwithout a big team of boxers\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re getting older, but we\u2019ll keep running the gym for the next few years.<\/p>\n

\u201cEddie and I complement each other. He\u2019s got strengths I haven\u2019t got, and I\u2019ve got strengths he hasn\u2019t got.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe make a good team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Tweed is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily Whanganui District Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cBut we still got two [golds] out of three. It\u2019s exciting. \u201cThis was Izi\u2019s fourth national title and,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":918362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[4032,617,25103,64,63,16490,802,21099,5587,5284,1899,57142,486433,486434,621,229623,85,84996,10678,34221,8935,3020,9963],"class_list":["post-918361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-amateur","tag-and","tag-association","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxers","tag-boxing","tag-championships","tag-from","tag-gold","tag-have","tag-isabella","tag-martons","tag-mcginniss","tag-national","tag-parkes","tag-sports","tag-titles","tag-whanganui","tag-whanganuis","tag-win","tag-xavier","tag-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918361","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=918361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/918362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=918361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=918361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=918361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}