The "sweet science" never gained
a foothold on the Hill, but the College does possess a pugilistic
history.
By
Michael E. Neagle '98
 It's
a fight club that few remember.
Yet tucked within the annals of Holy Cross’ rich
athletic tradition—dwarfed by the national titles
and No. 1 rankings—is a sport that never garnered
the same kind of attention as its more popular and mainstream
brethren. It has produced its share of champions, but you
won’t find any of their awards or trophies in the
Hart Center’s display case.
For more than 100 years, boxing has held a unique place
in the College’s athletic history. Though it only
flirted with “varsity” status, Holy Cross boxing
was populated with talented student-athletes, who were
either interested solely in the “sweet science” or
who were looking for a diverse way to train for another
sport.
With notables extending from amateur New England champion
Joe Lillich ’32 to the most recent member of its
fraternity, Derek Warner ’02 (see
sidebar), Holy
Cross boxing has had its share of characters and tales.
Here are a few of them from over the years:
The
Early Rounds: 1920–1930
Boxing has been a fixture at the College from the start. “Boxing
was a popular pastime among students as an intramural activity,” says
Rev. Anthony Kuzniewski, S.J., author of Thy
Honored Name,
a history of Holy Cross’ first 150 years. “At
holidays, the students who stayed at school sometimes included
boxing as part of an evening’s entertainment.” One
such example came during Thanksgiving break in 1891 when
Stanley Clinton and John Jordan squared off for four rounds
in front of fellow students.
The earliest known mention of any kind of formal boxing
club at the College was in a spring sports roundup in the
March 1921 edition of the Holy Cross
Purple. Under the
guidance of coach Billy Campell, an intramural squad worked
out twice a week in the gymnasium and showed “a surprising
aptitude in the manly art of self defense.” According
to the article, written by John F. Keating ’22, the
bouts were well attended.
Among the notables from the group of pioneering pugilists
was Bill Hennessey ’26, who later reportedly went
on to win the Amateur Championship of Worcester County. “It
is to be hoped,” Keating wrote, “that the interest
manifested in these bouts will be sustained by future events;
and that the time is not far distant when boxing will find
itself listed as a major sport at Holy Cross.”
But it was another four years before boxing was mentioned
again in a Holy Cross publication. According to an article
(“Boxing Class Started on Hill,” Feb. 17, 1925)
in the first issue of the student newspaper, The
Tomahawk,
the original boxing club folded due to a lack of “equipment
and enthusiasm.” But it was revived a few years later
as a “class” that received aid from the athletic
department. Adopted as a “minor sport,” the
reincarnated club was coached by James Regan ’28,
an amateur heavyweight champion in Philadelphia. The ambitious
new club looked to schedule bouts and recruit members,
most notably from the football squad.
However, that club, like its predecessor, failed to generate
much lasting support, and it took another four years before
a third attempt was made in the winter of 1929-30. Spurred
by Lillich, then a second-year student and reported to
be the “Amateur Heavyweight Champion of New England,” yet
another club was formed. “At last the long-promised
plans for a boxing team to represent the Crusaders in the
ring seem to be taking a definite form,” the January
1930 edition of the Purple declared. The
Tomahawk, too,
mirrored the same high hopes: “One athletic activity
which in recent years had seemed somewhat neglected here
at the Cross has found new life and promises to add considerably
to the glory of Alma Mater” (Jan. 7, 1930).
In addition to Lillich, who served as coach, the squad
had 14 members in a variety of weight classes. Since the
team didn’t have a regulation ring on campus, the
students practiced in batting cages in Loyola Hall (present-day
Carlin Hall) three times a week. This club also was a bit
more ambitious than previous versions—the group intended
to take part in intercollegiate bouts in the spring.
There are no known intercollegiate bouts involving Holy
Cross, and the record suggests that such matches were unlikely.
The next known mention of the club—in the November
1930 edition of the Holy Cross Alumnus—describes
it as intramural. Though the boxers were still practicing
in batting cages—the new equipment that was supposed
to have come earlier in the year apparently failed to materialize—the
team had found new leadership: Daniel J. Sheehan ’33
took over as coach for Lillich.
The
Middle Rounds: 1940–1950
Boxing stayed under the radar at Holy Cross for more than
a decade before catching the attention of the Worcester
Evening Gazette.
A Feb. 6, 1945 article reported that plans were under way
to create yet another team that would enter intercollegiate
tournaments. One of the reasons the sport seemed to enjoy
a revival was its inclusion in the College’s regular
athletic program, particularly for students in the Class
of ’46 who were part of the Navy program.
The sport continued to enjoy a new degree of popularity
through the 1950s, culminating in plans for a tournament
in February 1951. But, try as the students might, that
event suffered the same fate as the clubs and teams of
years past: It just couldn’t get off the mat.
Co-sponsored by The
Tomahawk and the Outing Club, students
tried organizing a boxing tournament called the “Purple
Gloves.” The tournament was first announced in a
column written by Tomahawk sports editor, Dave Anderson ’51—now
the renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning sports columnist for
The New York Times. Contained in a postscript to his Jan.
11, 1951 “Purple Pennings” column, Anderson
wrote:
“In the finest traditions of the I.B.C.,
or, going back, the 20th Century Sporting Club, a student
boxing tournament,
the ’Purple Gloves,’ will begin around the
middle of February with the finals about a week before
the Easter vacation begins.… Don’t worry about
having to fight some sharpie who’s had a little amateur
or professional experience. They’re in a class by
themselves. As an added incentive a plan whereby entrants
will be excused from a week’s classes to train at
Greenwood Lake and will receive a share of the television
receipts will soon be proposed to the Dean and the Treasurer’s
Office.”
The tournament was to have five divisions: Flyweight
(120-129 pounds); lightweight (130-145); middleweight
(146-160);
light heavyweight (161-174) and heavyweight (175+). And
there would be two categories in each of those divisions:
experienced and novice. However, four weeks later, the
front page of The Tomahawk contained this item:
“After consulting with the college
Administration and the Massachusetts Boxing Commission,
the TOMAHAWK and Outing
Club have deemed it advisable to cancel the boxing
tournament which they had planned to sponsor. The change
in plans
was made reluctantly and with hopes of only slight
inconvenience to prospective participants but was necessary
due to imminent
danger of injury to the boxers.”
Once again, boxing suffered a TKO at Holy Cross.
The
Later Rounds: 1960–Present
By the late 1960s, virtually all serious efforts to
establish a formal boxing club or team had ceased.
Instead, a few
individual athletes took up the sport independently,
mostly as a means to cross-train for other athletic
endeavors. Some were even able to parlay that training
into notoriety
in the ring.
Two such boxers were Mark Doherty ’70 and Bill Moncevicz ’70.
Both now are practicing dentists in Massachusetts, but
back then the two were teammates on the football team and
frequent workout partners. Since both had some boxing experience
in high school, they included select drills to help in
their overall conditioning.
As third-year students in 1969, the duo entered the
New England Golden Gloves tournament in Lowell, Mass.,
as
heavyweights. To prepare, Doherty says he would box
20 three-minute rounds
in order to prepare for three two-minute rounds, the
duration of bouts in the tournament. “I was really in tremendous
condition,” Doherty says. “(Moncevicz) was
the better boxer, but I had much better hands.”
It looked as if the pair would face off in the finals,
but Moncevicz lost in the semis before having to square
off against his friend. “I don’t know what
I would have done,” Moncevicz says. Doherty went
on to win the division, but it proved to be the last competitive
amateur boxing experience for both. Moncevicz, who says
he still works out regularly with a heavy bag and a speed
bag, had had enough. Doherty, who says he never lost in
about 20 amateur fights, considered entering the national
Golden Gloves tournament but declined, citing responsibilities
to the lacrosse team (for which he served as captain) and
his commitment to dental school.
Yet neither could get boxing completely out of his
system while a student on the Hill. Inspired by the
support
they received when they fought at the Golden Gloves
the year
before, Doherty and Moncevicz helped organize and judge
an on-campus boxing tournament in 1970. Unlike the
failed tournament of 1951, this extravaganza came off
without
a hitch.
The field began with nearly 50 students in six weight
classes taking part in practices at the Fieldhouse,
where the tournament
was held. The tournament was eventually pared down
to four competitors in each division. But unlike the
fate
Doherty
and Moncevicz avoided at the Golden Gloves, a pair
of friends faced off in the heavyweight finals.
Football teammates Bob Desaulniers ’70 and Jim Staszewski ’72,
who lined up against each other every day on the gridiron,
did so once again in the ring. According to Desaulniers,
the two trained together to prepare for the competition.
After each won his first-round match, they were due to
face off.
“Although we did not want to inflict
any harm on each other, we certainly did not want to lose,” Desaulniers says. “In
fact, when competing against a friend, you want to earn
his respect by giving your very best effort. So we operated
on the unspoken agreement that our friendship would be
suspended until after the match.” During the match,
in which Desaulniers emerged victorious, he recalls “hearing
the crowd respond with ‘oohs and aahs’ when
I got hit, providing me with the feedback that I must have
just got hit hard … wondering if I was hurt … or,
even worse, losing.”
The 1970 tournament set the stage for future bouts
in the Fieldhouse. In the mid-1970s, the Purple Key
Society
held
boxing tournaments as the highlight of the annual “Minor
Sports Drive.” In addition to Holy Cross students,
these tournaments included fighters from local athletic
clubs. Initially, just a handful of students participated
in the event (only seven in 1974). But with each successive
year, the event grew in popularity with the student population—going
from seven Holy Cross-only bouts in 1975 to 12 just two
years later. “A Friday night in the old Madison Square
Garden it wasn’t, but ’Boxing Night’ held
in the Fieldhouse … had at least as much enthusiasm
as those cards of pugilism’s heyday,” wrote
Steve Kuduk ’78 in The Crusader about the April 1975
tournament.
Kevin McEneaney ’80 was a veteran of two “Minor
Sports Drive” tournaments. In 1976, he lost a decision—“Three
rounds of real-life rock’em sock’em robots,” he
says—and then won via TKO over Jim Haldeman ’77
a year later (the only one of the 12 bouts that year that
didn’t end via a decision). “I remember throwing
jabs to measure my distance and then a right that connected
with his jaw,” recalls McEneaney, who taught boxing
for two years at the Boys Club in Worcester while a student. “He
went down and never came back up. It was like a blur to
me because I figured that if he did get up, we would be
at war. It was and continues to be one of the most memorable
nights of my life. The atmosphere in the Fieldhouse was
truly exciting.”
The next generation of Holy Cross boxers didn’t come
along until Derek Warner ’02, who may have been the
school’s most serious amateur fighter since Lillich.
Still, new calls for boxing clubs or teams—formal
or informal—haven’t come in years and likely
won’t anytime soon—considering the abundance
of other sports at Holy Cross and the fact that taking
a few blows to the head just isn’t as attractive
as it used to be. Nevertheless, boxing remains woven in
the athletic fabric of the College.
"Warner '02 and
the Good Fight" Sidebar >
Mike Neagle '98 is pursuing his Ph.D.
in history at the University of Connecticut.
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