A MILDURA boxing club has become the first to take home South Australia’s Country Club of the Year award for two years running.
Ladd’s Boxing Club was presented the award at a ceremony following Boxing South Australia’s first fight card of the year earlier this month.
The awards are decided on a system of points allocated for fight entries and wins, with wins at higher-calibre events such as state titles being worth more.
The club was also in the running for Club of the Year award but was beaten out by Team Turner, a city-based club with more than double the active fighters and four times the membership.
Ladd’s fighters were involved in more than 50 bouts in 2023, taking out wins at every major boxing event including the national and state titles, King of the Ring, Queen of the Ring, WA v SA and more.
Coach Jackson Ladd said he was happy to see the team’s hard work being recognised.
“It was really good,” Ladd said.
“We’ve done it two years in a row now.
“It’ll be harder to get this year because we have less fighters but I’m confident we can do it again.
“It goes off all fights but it also goes off the way you conduct yourself as a club, and we conduct ourselves well.
“We also have really consistent fighters.
“We had over 50 fights but if we’d had every fight we’d nominated for last year it would’ve been 75 fights in a year, which is huge.
“Every single major event we entered we took a win.”
Coach Steve Ladd echoed this.
“It is a good reward for the effort we put in,” he said.
“Over 50 fights out of a small country club is big, and it just shows you how much the athletes did and how much the committee did to get the athletes there.
“This wouldn’t have been possible without the money raised through the Hogarth Cup helping us get the athletes to those events.
“We wouldn’t have won if we’d just been fighting in South Australia.
“It is all the trips away that contributed to that win.
“We are the first country club to win (the award) back-to-back.”
The team won’t bask in the glory of the accolade for long with their fighters already back in the gym preparing for upcoming fights.
“The plans for this year are the same as last year,” Jackson Ladd said.
“Hamish Berry and I are off to Sydney in two weeks for the King of the Ring and then we have the Boxing SA card in March.
“We are also waiting to see if any of our athletes are put on the development squad,” Steve Ladd added.
