Celebrating women in sports

Six foot three and 240 lbs versus five foot nothing and maybe half that weight soaking wet. Not too hard to guess who'd win in a fight, right?

Wrong.

Young champion Orla Davis demonstrated boxing skills to her schoolmates on Thursday with the help of her coach, Ryan McGivern of Meraki Box, Rapid City, and showed she can hold her own no matter the size of her opponent.

As someone whose drive to win is matched only by her desire to kindle the same love of sport in her peers, Davis wanted to celebrate National Girls and Women in Sports Day (NGWSD) by proving it doesn't take height and weight to be a firestorm in the ring.

As McGivern noted to the kids in the audience, gone are the days when women were just a footnote in the world of sport. Today, he said, women are the ones with their hands raised in the Coliseum.

"Women are more than capable of accomplishing extreme feats, even in...combat sports," he said.

Davis was introduced by her friend Savannah Peterson, another local pioneer in women's sports. Together, Peterson and Davis are the first girls to ever compete on the Sundance High School wrestling team.

"A little over a year ago, Orla went to a boxing tournament just as a fan. She had been training for a couple of years at home," said Peterson.

"After the tournament, she walked up to the ring and told her dad, next year, I'm going to be coming back here to compete and win the championship...With Ryan's training, less than a year later, Orla did go back to the tournament and did become a champion, winning the South Dakota State Junior Olympics at 120 lbs."

The booms of Orla's punches resounded from the walls of the auditorium as she sparred with her coach after showing off her rope jump skills. The duo demonstrated footwork, pad work and sparring, then put on an actual fight to show how it all comes together.

NGWSD is held annually during the first week of February to acknowledge the accomplishments of female athletes, recognize the influence of sports participation for women and girls and honor the progress and continuing struggle for equality for women in sports. It was initiated in 1987 as a day to remember Olympic volleyball player Flo Hyman, who died suddenly of Marfan's Syndrome while competing in Japan.

It's an important day for our society and culture, said McGivern. For a long time, women in combat sports were mostly "ring card girls" or perceived as the entertainment factor as they boxed in bikinis.

"They were never taken seriously as competitors. But now, in 2023, one of the fastest growing demographics in professional boxing, mixed martial arts and in combat sports is females," he said.

"What we have learned as men is that we should step aside because literally every show we go to, everyone is like, man, I'm excited to watch the girls fight, because they fight with a tenacity that some of guys [just] wish we had."

McGivern hears from parents all the time that their child has what it takes to succeed in boxing, but, in Orla's case, he said, it was undeniably true. Before the tournament, he lectured her that his gym was undefeated and he expected that she would not ruin the streak.

Orla was joined by three well-trained and experienced male boxers in representing the gym at Rumble in the Falls. At the end, she was the gym's sole champion.

"Out of all the people I've trained, I can sincerely before you and before God tell you that the hardest working athlete I have ever found in my life is this young lady," McGivern said.

Orla's tenacity and stubbornness is something McGivern hasn't even found in himself, he said, "So when you talk about, can women do what men can do? Absolutely, and then some."

Orla is living proof of what women can achieve, he said, telling the girls in the audience: "Don't ever feel like you can't accomplish the same things that a strong man in your life could accomplish. You can do that, and way, way more."

McGivern gave a second talk to the students after the demonstration. This time, his focus was on the importance of sports in general.

How many of the kids in the audience are facing "giants", he asked? Life can be scary, but McGivern said that, after being the target of bullies, he began boxing himself as a way to overcome that fear.

It's about facing your fear, he said. He explained that sport can be a way to boost your confidence and enabled him to let go of those feelings and ultimately befriend the kids who had bullied him.

"Sometimes the struggle is real. We want to be cool, we want to come to school, we want to act like we can brush all the stress of our life off," he said.

"We don't want anybody to know that we're afraid."

With the confidence of boxing, McGivern no longer had anything to prove – to himself, or to the bullies he once feared. Self-control, discipline and the confidence to know you can overcome whatever life throws at you are the skills you hone through sports training, he said, and that's how you deal with giants.

As the assembly came to a close, he asked the kids if they had any more questions. There was just one.

"Go again?"