MIDDLEWEIGHTS OF ‘68
A collegiate Contender Reflects on the Halcyon Days of Youth

By James Loverde ’68.

Jim Loverde, a 1968 ND graduate and Bengal Boxer is a professional writer in Chicago.

The annual intramural boxing tournaments at the University of Notre Dame are known as the Bengal Bouts. Proceeds from these tournaments are sent to the missions of the Holy Cross Fathers in Bangladesh, which was formerly the Bengal Province of India. The founder of the program was the late Dominic "Nappy" Napolitano, a soft-spoken, gray-haired ex-lightweight who ran every tournament from 1931 until his retirement in 1980. It was my privilege to have participated in three of them.

Grouping the boxers into weight classes was not always easy, as Nappy would have been the first to admit. But he beamed when he put Jed Ervin, Kent Casey, Mike Lavery and myself into the 155-pound bracket for the 1968 bouts. Even before the pairings were tacked onto the bulletin board of the old Field House, we were being vaunted around campus as belonging to the toughest division.

Expectations grew during the week before the tournament. Nappy cut our sparring sessions short before we left all our fighting in the gym. He also reserved high praise for our "banging," as did an article in the Scholastic, the campus magazine.

But did we really deserve the distinction? There was plenty of talent and desire in the other weight classes. Were our punches any harder? No conniving cur from a Sergeant Cribb Mystery had soaked our hands in vinegar while we were asleep -- or had stuck plaster from a Tudor attic into our sixteen-ounce gloves. Still, the reports persisted. Jed Ervin and Mike Lavery fought on Monday night, March 13th. I do not recall the name of the junior Lavery’s home town, but it had bred a dangerous hitter with two titles and a string of knockouts going back to his freshman year. Kansas City Ervin, a sophomore, could rock a steer into amnesia with his systematic brawling. He had also excelled as a wrestler and weight lifter in high school. In the finals the year before, I had beaten him after he slowed down in the second and third rounds.

As Ervin’s corner man that evening, I tried to give him the benefit of my ringside blather. I also wanted to get a close look at the fight. The referee gave instructions, while Ervin and Lavery glowered at each other with flinty blue eyes and hair a lighter shade of red. Then they gave the audience the battle everyone wanted, with Ervin wading into the fray and carrying off the decision. The following Wednesday, I climbed into the ring to face Kent Casey. Though I had trained harder than ever, I felt a little weary as the gold robe was draped over my shoulders. I was no longer an unknown freshman -- eager to win my first athletic awards since little league baseball and to beat all the reverses of my eighteen years to death. Nor was I the character back from a year of studies in Innsbruck, Austria -- nursing maladjustments and shin splints and winning a championship for an appreciative crowd.

In our senior year, if not sooner, we admit to ourselves that our college years were not all halcyon days. Not everyone cheered when my name was announced. Kent Casey was a sophomore from Carroll, Iowa. His rough-hewn good looks and dead pan stare always reminded me of the hero’s younger brother in a wild West classic. He also had great speed and a good boxing style. Neither of us were as bulky as our two counterparts. When the bell rang, I did not bother circling around Casey to reconfirm how fast he was. I opted instead for a quick rush, and this gave me a slight advantage. We flailed at each other with no quarter throughout the first round.

My corner man, law student and former boxer, John Scripp, had a smile on his dusky face as he wiped blood from a cut over my left eye. "Next round, try leading with your hands instead of your head," he recommended.

I tried to follow his advice, but the results were the same. Our barrages hardly let up for the rest of the match. With a half of a minute to go, I slipped Casey’s left and planted a crude right hook on the side of his head. That same stunt had worked in the finals against Ervin the year before.

I never had knockout power, but I jarred Casey enough to work up a final rally. The judges gave me a split decision, and an attendant put a butterfly bandage on that dent over my left eye. I would meet Jed Ervin again in the finals, and Casey was to have it out with Mike Lavery in the match before ours. At the pre-fight dinner on Friday, I confessed my neglect of defense to Coach Nappy.

"You looked like a million dollars," he said. "Don’t worry about it." Ervin and I paced among the empty locker room benches in silence. Both of us had shied away part of the preceding summer in the company of suitable sparring mates. I tried to relax, without forming any definite plan. Rangy John McGrath, my good friend, stepped out from a group of ex-combatants and wished me luck. He was fresh from winning his second lightweight title. Then the news broke that Kent Casey, by far the most dashing of our glum quartet, had knocked Lavery out midway into the First Act.

Nappy gave the nod to Ervin and me, and we ascended into the ring. I again went to the attack at the start of the bout. Ervin retorted with his usual rapid paroxysm. Though I slowed one of his advances with a good straight right, he got the better of the exchanges by the time the two minutes were up.

I rested in my corner and thought over my predicament. My second that night was fellow senior Dave Paul, a fair-haired gentleman bruiser. Paul counseled me wisely to mix my rights with left hooks.

But my best punch was always a decent left jab. ("It covers a multitude of sins!" a Chicago CYO coach was fond of saying.) I led off round two with a convincing left-right that gave my classmates hope of a comeback. Some more of my punches landed, but Ervin countered well and kept the momentum, I pressed forward even harder, instead of covering up and pacing myself. For this, I did penance.

In the third round, I let that right hook fly once more. Ervin had been reminding himself to avoid it for an entire year. He held back as I cut a silent quadrant through the fusty air of the Field House -- like a last salute to the sports program that had treated me so well.

Fortunately, I recovered before Ervin could take undue advantage of this gallant gesture. We clashed again and found ourselves grappling in a roving clinch.

"He’s otta gas, Jim! He’s otta gas!" my father hollered from ringside. But fatigue was coiling over my arms and legs like a windlass. In the final seconds, I struggled to emboss my farewell tidings somewhere -- anywhere -- above the "Everlast" label on Ervin’s blue drawers. The ending bell sounded, and we fell into another clinch.

"Good fight, Jimbo."

"Okay, partner."

Ervin had won the 155 lb. title.

Amidst the locker room bustle, a friendly underclassman snipped at the tapes and removed my gloves and head guard. I could hear Ervin telling some other boxers, "He got me good a couple o’ times."

But Nappy said, "You blew yourself out," with a flick of his hand. I sat down on a training table and applied an ice pack to the right side of my jaw. Father Brennan, our chaplain, walked by and showed me how to bite down to get the soreness out. It helped.

When Nappy announced the awards at the end of the tournament, Jed Ervin was given the Larry Ash trophy as best boxer. A shadow of disappointment passed over me. But it was quickly dispelled by congratulations from classmates, a few dissenting opinions, and a party with friends that lasted all night.

The next day was unseasonably warm and sunny, though worse weather was to come. Some of the happiest chapters of my life were over.