When you mention "national champions" and "UConn," your mind likely goes to the men's and women's basketball teams. But, across campus, there’s another group of athletes bringing national champions to Storrs.
“They had a club here that didn't compete,” Mike Campisano said when asked about how the UConn Boxing Club came to be. “At the time, I was coaching at the Coast Guard Academy.”
“At the time” was 2015. Campisano knew the person running the club and was looking for a change.
“He said they'll never want to do what you want to do I said, ‘Just give me a chance,'" he said.
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It's not quite the underdog story of a scrappy kid from Philly, but like Rocky at the Museum of Art, Campisano took it one step at a time.
“We had two heavy bags that we placed on chairs,” Campisano said of the state of things when he took over the club sport in 2015.
Add in a few pairs of hand-me-down gloves and about 30 kids and that was step one.
Sports
See, unlike the Division I athletes who come to UConn to play across campus at Gampel Pavilion, most of Campisano’s athletes are just out to try something new.
“First week, I'm out recruiting,” Campisano said. “I stand outside Gampel Pavilion. I made a sign. Anybody that looked like an athlete that made eye contact, I grabbed them and said, ‘Hey let me talk to you for a minute.'"
As year one turned to year eight and 30 kids became 200 turning out for tryouts, their goals got bigger, too.
“And every year, we got more competitive and I kind of kept upping the ante every year,” Campisano said.
“The vision that we have for this team is to be as competitive as possible,” UConn Boxing Team junior Jon Schmitt said.
This year, they brought nine athletes to nationals and two of them became national champions.
“The first day honestly I had the belt, I couldn't believe it” said Aidan Jubb, the NCBA 185 national champion. “I slept with it and I woke up and it was just unreal.”
As a team, they accomplished something even greater.
“We walked away the number one ranked civilian school in the country,” said Campisano.
The Huskies took fourth place overall behind only the service academies: Air Force in third, Army in second and Navy in first.
They may not be hoping for a parade or a sign on the highway, but they do want the state to know, they’re national champions, too. And that they’re not done yet.
“We still got to beat Army, Navy and Air Force next year,” Schmitt said. “That's the plan.”
