The young girls from Quesnel’s 2 River’s boxing club shined at an all-female boxing event in Sooke this weekend.
Britynn ‘Hurricane’ Carter, 12, notched her first technical knock-out (TKO) win in the first round against Eve Thompson from Jamestown Boxing Club in Oshawa, Ontario, and Camille ‘Dynamite’ Logan, 12, got her first ring experience with a fun box against hometown girl Kya Burley, who fights out of Sooke Boxing Club.
Dubbed West Coast Wonder Women, the show featured 58 boxers of all ages and skill levels who came from the far reaches of the continent to compete.
For the Quesnel girls, it was a phenomenal opportunity.
“They got to see fighters that they admire, learn from them and inspire themselves to be great,” says Cameron Tetrault, a 2 Rivers coach who travelled with the pair.
“For Camille, it was her first fight, so we went down there looking for experience and she came out knowing what true boxing feels like.”
Logan fought a fun box, or exhibition match, comprised of three one-minute rounds. That may not seem like long to a lay person, but being under the lights can be pretty daunting and cause a huge adrenaline dump.
Tetrault says she handled it like a pro.
“It’s totally different being in that sort of fight; you go into survival mode,” he says.
“But she was amazing! She was able to land combinations that were above those of someone in their first fight because she was pretty confident in her abilities.”
Logan says she was nervous that she would get beat really hard. She is, after all, one of Carter’s sparring partners, so has taken her share of punishment in the ring.
Thankfully, she got an arm massage from her coach, which she says really helped loosen her up before the bout.
“It was a really fair match,” Logan says of the fight itself.
“But it was hard at the same time, because we were both working very hard.”
She was rewarded for her efforts with a pair of blue and pink West Coast Wonder Women boxing gloves.
‘Hurricane’ Carter had to fight through a little adversity in order to get the impressive victory in the island event.
The weight cut to get to 88 lbs was a difficult one, with Carter sticking to a diet of fruit and vegetables to make it happen.
She says she wasn’t feeling very well when she was making the trip down, so her mom got her to practise her shadow boxing on the ferry across.
Once they arrived, she drank some Pedialyte to replenish her electrolytes, which helped immensely.
On the walk to the ring, she felt pretty confident, but wasn’t interested in going the distance against her opponent from the east.
“I didn’t really want to do the three rounds, so in my head I was saying, ‘I’m trying to get the TKO! I’m going to try. I’m going to try.'”
She did a lot more than try.
Carter frustrated her opponent with deft head movement, keeping her hands up and ducking under Thompson’s punches.
Seeing an opportunity early, Carter was able to land a clubbing right hook that sent her foe to the canvas.
“That caused her to get a little bit frustrated,” Carter says.
“She started throwing big, wide right hooks of her own.”
As any smart fighter knows, the way to counter someone who is trying to land wild power shots is to come straight up the middle.
Carter did just that, landing a flush straight right cross, that knocked her opponent right onto her behind and won ‘Hurricane’ her first bout by TKO at the 1:20 mark of the very first round.
Tetrault says Carter continues to impress everyone at the club.
“As she gets more exposure and more experience, she can start seeing new opportunities to win a fight and she also sees opportunities to learn what she needs to work on.
“She’s also very driven, so she’ll be right back at it, working hard, learning different ways to tighten up her guard, her striking and her overall craft.”
