NEW YORK (Feb. 25, 2016) – 60 MINUTES SPORTS will offer a window into one of the most time-honored traditions in America’s military when it presents a segment on the U.S. Naval Academy’s boxing program and its annual Brigade Boxing Championship. The feature builds up to the 75th championship this Friday, Feb. 26, in Annapolis, Md., and correspondent Jack Ford and 60 MINUTES SPORTS will be in the arena to record the action for the men’s and women’s bouts. The report will appear on the next edition of 60 MINUTES SPORTS, Tuesday, March 1 at 9 p.m. ET/PT, on SHOWTIME.
Boxing has been practiced at the nation’s second oldest military institution for 150 years, and midshipmen have vied for the Brigade Boxing Championship since 1941. Along the way to this year’s 75th anniversary, the academy has made learning to box a requirement of graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy.
The man who teaches the “sweet science” to midshipmen – male and female – is Head Boxing Coach Jim McNally. It’s about future leaders facing fear. “We use boxing…as a laboratory…an environment of controlled stress, physical fear,” says McNally. “We want them to learn a lot about themselves and how they’re going to react to those situations,” he tells Ford.
60 MINUTES SPORTS shot the story in Annapolis in the fall and last January to show the process and tell the stories of three midshipmen who will be in the ring this Friday fighting for a championship. One of them, Samantha Glaeser, has a chance to make academy history. There have been only 19 at Annapolis to win the crown all four years at the Naval Academy, and none was a woman. Glaeser has a chance Friday night.
Ford also speaks with Glaeser’s foe, Stephanie Simon, another midshipmen with pugilistic talents who has a National Collegiate Boxing championship under her belt. She has not been able to defeat Glaeser, however, in their two previous meetings for the brigade championship.
Ford also talks to Midshipman Jourdan Looney, whose two brigade championship titles are testament to what boxing means to the Academy. He had no boxing experience before he entered the Naval Academy. “Boxing…fighting is one of my biggest fears. I conquer that one fear, I’ve conquered any other fear that I could possibly have.” He’ll be in contention for his third brigade title Friday night.
The U.S. Naval Academy Superintendent, Vice Adm. Walter Carter, sums up the importance of boxing to America’s future naval officers for Ford. “[Boxing] is that moment where no matter how well you think you have planned out your couple minutes in the ring, you’re going to learn something new, because that plan is going to have to be different….”