May 4, 2006
LAS VEGAS - The UNLV boxing team, which is a club sport at UNLV, won the National Collegiate Boxing Association national championship in Reno in April by defeating Air Force and Army by one point to become the first non-military program to win the tournament since 1993.
"Winning this championship was huge," said head coach Skip Kelp. "It is something that when you start a program you hope to attain, to be the best, and winning this championship was a goal of ours and is a tremendous accomplishment.
"Everyone worked so hard. Talent-wise we may have been better in the past but this team made a commitment, which allowed us to fight at a high talent level and we really showed a lot of heart."
The team's first gold medal was earned at the 156-pound division by Greg Murrell, who defeated three No. 1 regional seeds. Murrell was the defending national champion at the 165-pound division.
195-pound fighter Henry Namauu won his final match with a first-round knockout, which was coupled by an Air Force fighter defeating a Navy boxer by decision to give UNLV the gold.
Daniel Reece, who was a defending national champion and won the western regional championship this year, tore his rotator cuff a week before the tournament and Alex Nyakana, who also won at the western regional was out as well.
"That was a huge blow," Kelp added. "It was already tough enough to win, but to win without two of our best guys made it even tougher. But we met with the team and told them if everyone carries their weight and everyone gives their best effort we could pull this out and that is exactly what we did."
Individually, the Rebels won two gold medals (Murrell and Namauu) and three silver medals - Jason Morris (112 lbs), Jeff Watkins (147 lbs) and club president Jason Crocco (185 lbs).
165-pound fighter Joey Massa, 132-pound fighter Nathan Wong and 175-pound fighter Joe Brown won bronze medals. Heavyweight (196 lbs) Justin Brown lost in the first round.
"Boxing is an individual sport, but all the guys that didn't win their fights were just as happy that we won the team title as if they had won their individual fights," Kelp said. "Winning the national championship is something that we only had hoped to get to as a program and the fact that we were able to accomplish it is a great feeling. It hopefully will start a legacy now that we are a national championship program."
"This is an eight-year program and we had a goal of six years to win the national championship," said Bruce Kobrin, a prominent booster of the program and member of the UNLV Boxing Club Board of Directors. "We were two years behind our goal, but we feel like we have accomplished a lot in that basically none of our kids are on scholarship while the service academy kids really are. Because of that we had an uphill battle to fill all weight classes but we did it. Plus we have been able to be self-sufficient financially and the money has been raised through the community through various donors such as the Palms Hotel who has been a big supporter thanks to Gavin Maloof.
"We have also had Coors Brewery involved as well as a number of other businesses, so that has helped us to make sure we are able to function as a team. I think this is a tremendous accomplishment to get this done and we are looking forward to defending our title and to making our program bigger and better."
For more information on UNLV boxing, please contact Kelp at 702-612-0168.
