BROCKPORT — It was only her second fight, but Clare O’Connell can claim herself as the champ.

O’Connell won the gold medal at the Empire State Games after winning her one and only match, the gold-medal bout in the super heavyweight (189-pound plus) on Saturday night at the State University of New York College at Brockport.

O’Connell defeated Shanell Mathes of Long Island in a 5-0 decision.
"It was ugly," O’Connell said after fight. "But I’m glad I won. She threw more punches than me but most of mine connected."

For her second ever fight, O’Connell said she was ex-tremely happy. She also knows what she needs to work on.
"Conditioning definitely," O’Connell said. "And getting more confidence in the ring. I need to get more experience."

O’Connell clearly looked inex-perienced in the ring, but was able to rely on her superior ath-leticism, height, and size. She won the shot put at the games last year.

O’Connell threw some hard punches Saturday that staggered Mathes, but her inexperience prevented her ending the match earlier than going all four rounds.

O’Connell has only been seri-ous about boxing for a year.
"My friend, John, back in col-lege, used to talk about it," O’Connell said. She was a stu-dent at Rider University in New Jersey. "So I started working out but I didn’t have anyone to spar with. I didn’t get into the ring. But I started again last July. At the end of July."

Serious about boxing

Boxing keeps the former Divi-sion I track athlete competitive and in shape.
"I started in Pennsylvania," O’Connell said. "I knew some people that trained there while I was still in Trenton. But, when I got back from college, I started going to the Albany Boxing gym.

And now she is in great shape.
"I was 260 pounds and now I’m down to 222," O’Connell said. "I’m not lifting. You don’t need to for boxing. I do a lot of running for conditioning. A lot of run-ning.
"I don’t spar that much," O’Connell added. "I get in there with the heavyweight guys sometimes. That is really good for me."

O’Connell says she usually works out for a couple of hours after work. She works at the LaSalle School — a school for troubled kids — on Western Avenue.
"They are good kids," she said of the students there. "They just got in with the wrong crowd. We encourage them to play sports and I really get to work with them. We give them a lot of en-couragement and positive rein-forcement."

There is a big difference be-tween working out in the dark, dreary gym and fighting under the bright lights in front of a large crowd.
"You get tired quicker," O’Connell said. "I think it’s be-cause there is more pressure to win."

O’Connell is serious about boxing. Though she did not have a match, she watched the semi-final matches on Friday night at Brockport. She cheered on her Adirondack teammates and learned by watching them in the ring.

She also showed that she has learned a lot about the sport in her short time competing. She was yelling advice for each of her teammates — especially the younger ones like Mike Faragon of Guilderland who had a tough match in his semifinal against rival Darnell Jiles of Western, the home region.

And though the Olympics seem like an unlikely pipe dream, O’Connell would like to reach them some day. But she also just enjoys the sport, no matter how far she is able to go in it. There is a possibility she will fight in a tournament in Tennessee in early September. But if she can’t get the time off from her job, she is not going to go.
"It’s to keep me in shape," O’Connell said of boxing. "It’s something to do. I just take it day to day."

There are big differences from competing in the shot put.
"In shot put, you win and you really don’t know you did," she said. "In this, you’ve got some-body looking right at you and trying to beat you. It’s more of a pride thing."

But there is one main reason why she gets in the ring and takes punches while giving them out.
"It’s fun," O’Connell said. "I get so nervous before the fight. I’m just sitting there. I wish I did a better job. But I won the gold and I did what I needed to do.
"It’s the adrenaline," O’Connell added. "It’s very self satisfying. I know I can do this. It’s gratifying more than the shot put."