Chicago Golden Gloves shines spotlight on female boxers

CHICAGO — Claire Quinn fell in love with boxing when she started taking lessons to help her get back in shape following knee surgery.

Now 30, she is one of the top-ranked amateurs in her weight class and has her sights set on turning pro and fighting on local cards.

Like Quinn, Jessie LaFree trains at Unanimous Boxing Gym in Chicago. At 34 and with a busy career as an architect, she isn’t looking to box on the biggest stages.

Quinn and LaFree were among the 40 women entered in this year’s Chicago Golden Gloves tournament. The storied event that celebrated its 100th anniversary this month counts Joe Louis, Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali when he was known as Cassius Clay as past champions. But it has also given women a chance to show what they can do in the ring since 1994.

“One thing that I really like about boxing in general is that I’m one of those people that constantly wants to learn something, and there’s always something to learn in the sport,” said Quinn, tied for eighth at 154 pounds in USA Boxing’s rankings. “Whether it’s with your feet, with your hands, you know, mind game, that sort of thing. So it’s just every time I step in there, whether it’s mitts or sparring, it’s always an opportunity to learn and get better at it.”

Quinn grew up in Sarasota, Florida, and moved to Chicago when she was 18 to study music business at Columbia College.

Her father encouraged her to join a boxing gym seven years ago following surgery to remove the meniscus in her right knee. Years of long-distance running, volleyball and riding horses, had taken a toll.

She began competing in late 2018. After a pause for grad school in sports marketing at Northwestern, she started fighting again last year out of Unanimous in the city’s West Loop and Logan Square neighborhoods. She also works as a full-time coach and trainer there, with her labradoodle Sparky in tow, and oversees the gym’s website.

“I’m having a lot of success with the girls that I fought here in Chicago so far, but they’ve all had kind of similar styles,” Quinn says. “What happens when I run into a girl with a style that I’ve never seen before?”

Both fighters went straight to the finals on April 15, with Quinn losing by decision and LaFree winning by walkover at 139 pounds because her opponent did not make weight.

LaFree started taking classes seven or eight years ago at another gym, where a trainer who noticed how hard she hit suggested she start fighting.

With a “crazy professional career,” she is not looking toward the Olympics or turning pro. When she is not designing homes, she’s teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she attended grad school.

LaFree enjoys staying in shape and the camaraderie boxing gives her. And she gets a kick out of people’s reactions when she tells them she’s fought in the Chicago Golden Gloves.

“I work with a lot of distinguished architects, people who have worked in the city a long time,” LaFree said. “When I tell them … they get so excited because they remember going to see it when they were younger or having someone they knew fight in it, which is very cool.”