Romeo more motivated than ever

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This article was published 08/12/2023 (869 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It all started with a loss.

It was one year ago when Patty Romeo stepped into the ring at her home gym at Pan Am Boxing and fell short against United Boxing Club’s Ivana Chu.

“It broke my heart, honestly. I don’t know why, but I took that loss so hard,” said Romeo, 37.

“But that fight propelled me forward.”

Romeo started boxing when she was 30 and had a handful of fights before the pandemic. This year, the Winnipegger has been more motivated than ever. The goal was to get to 10 fights — which would put her in the open class so she could square off against more experienced boxers and compete at national events.

The plan was to use the experience to help her become a coach, but things changed for good reason.

“I did well. I was 9-1. I had that one loss, and then I won all my fights. I got that win back against (Chu) in a rematch, so I was like, ‘OK, let’s keep going and see how I do,’” said Romeo, who now boasts a career record of 12-3.

She travelled across Canada — with her coach/partner Adam Jacobson at her side — to build up her fight resume, and now, she’s in Montreal at the National Training Centre for the Boxing Canada Olympic Qualifiers in an eight-person single-elimination tournament at the 54-kilogram weight class.

The winner moves on to a world qualifier event in Italy (Feb. 29 -March 12).

Romeo punched her ticket to the semi-finals with a victory over Quebec’s Talia Birch. Today, she takes on the No. 1 seed — Brampton, Ont.’s Scarlett Delgado.

Delgado is a national champion who competed at the 2023 Pan Am Games in Chile.

The Montreal qualifiers has tournaments for men and women in all different weight classes this weekend.

“Now that I’ve won, it’s built a lot of confidence and made me believe that I can compete at this level, and that feels great,” said Romeo.

“I want to say that I think I can win. I’m going to give it my best shot… I’m going to try to at least give her a tough fight.”

Knocking down Delgado is a tall task, but Jacobson has seen Romeo defy the odds all year. He also sees her dedication to her craft at the gym, and when they’re at home.

“It’s not very common for someone at that age to start and go as far as she has. She says she started at 30, but she’s really only competed in this way for a year. For what she’s done in a year, really, in all my time in boxing, I’ve never experienced and seen someone do that at that age,” said Jacobson, who’s also 37.

“It’s funny, if I didn’t know Patty, if she wasn’t my partner and if I didn’t live with her, I’d maybe be more surprised than I am. I know what she’s capable of and I’ve seen her athleticism, her heart, and the fire she has for sport and for boxing.”

Romeo hasn’t been throwing hooks and jabs for that long, but she’s no stranger to excelling in athletics. The head of marketing for a software company called Juvonno, she played NCAA Division I soccer at North Dakota State University from 2004-07.

“I hadn’t actually played soccer in over a year. I was sedentary, just working at my office and had kind of given up on sports for a bit. I did one class at Pan Am, almost fainted, and thought I’d never come back. And I didn’t. I didn’t come back for a year,” she said.

“And then, I was going through a really tough time in my personal life, found the boxing gym, and it was an amazing outlet for me. It was a great community, and I made a lot of friends during this program called Fight Games. And I was hooked after that.”

Even though Romeo went from using her feet to using her hands, she believes the work ethic she learned through soccer has benefited her boxing journey.

“I think it’s interesting because with soccer, I love the team aspect of it, but it requires a team, it requires everyone on the field to be on the same page. And with boxing, what I fell in love with is the fact that it’s all up to me and my coach. What I put in is what I get out,” she said. “I think that was a new perspective on sports that I loved that I never really got with soccer. It’s exciting to take destiny into your own hands and just go after it.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

X: @TaylorAllen31