Thinking Outside the Box

During the offseason the women's basketball team has been using boxing workouts to get into shape

By Joshua D. Scroggin

Jenifer Alcorn’s northeast Fresno home looks normal enough—until she hits the garage door opener.

Then you see the Fresno State women’s basketball players donning 16-ounce boxing gloves and throwing punches at everything in the room from air to water-filled heavy bags to each other.

What does all this have to do with basketball?

“ Be here for one hour,” Alcorn said, “then ask me that again.”

The Fresno State women’s basketball team is spending its offseason workout time training with Alcorn—the IWBF lightweight world champion. The team is in the last week of a six-week program where the players do hour-long boxing workouts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

The workouts have turned into a bonding process between players and coach, with the players finding a new appreciation for fitness and Alcorn finding her newest hard-rooting fan club.

“ They told us [we would be boxing] the first day of workouts, and I was like, ‘Wow,’” said junior Cophie Moore. “I’d heard about [Jenifer]. She doesn’t lift weights. She’s really ripped. It’s strictly off this and push-ups.”

“ This” is a combination of punching exercises, footwork drills and sports plyometrics.

Alcorn said weight training doesn’t necessarily translate into applicable strength.

“ You tell them to bench press 10 times, and they can do it,” Alcorn said. “You tell them to do 10 push-ups, and they can’t. Why is that?”

So Bulldogs coach Stacy Johnson-Klein opted to reduce the team’s weight training this fall and gave Alcorn the chance to bolster the team’s upper body strength with her boxing methods.

Moore said she knew little of what to expect about the new training techniques.

“ At first, I thought she was going to be really intimidating,” Moore said.

And that’s something Johnson-Klein was banking on when she brokered the deal to have her squad work out with the local champion.

“ [Jenifer]’s really a hard-nosed person,” Johnson-Klein said. “I’m a little softer, and I just love her. She gives a different twist than what I give.”

Alcorn has the players compete in exhausting punching drills.

They 1-2 punch the heavy bag for two minutes straight without stopping. They toss jab, cross and hook combinations at each other while their partners block and duck the blows.

They don’t actually box. They aren’t competing in underground prizefights, and aside from an accidental bop after a bob that should have been a weave, the drills are non-contact.

But everything they’re learning can be used for self-defense, Alcorn said. The boxer has taught the team to both launch and defend against attacks.

Although Alcorn says the one-hour-a-day, three-days-a-week boxing workouts benefit basketball fundamentals, the players, coaches and Alcorn all acknowledged the psychological boost of flinging their fists.

“ Even though these girls are athletes, they are still women,” Alcorn said. “One of the common things with women is self-esteem and self-confidence. You can be an athlete and still be very self-conscious, and this skill breeds confidence. You walk with your shoulders up a little higher.”

This team should be able to use that confidence booster. The Bulldogs lost four of their top-five scorers from last season’s team, which made its longest postseason run in more than 10 years.

“ I’m scared to death,” Johnson-Klein said. “We don’t have Lindsay Logan. We don’t have Omelogo [Udeze]. We don’t have the kids that were able to put up big numbers.”

Enter Alcorn, who has made the Bulldogs believe they can compete with anyone.

“ That’s what we’ve learned,” junior Aritta Lane said. “It doesn’t matter who you’re going up against. You just do what you need to do.”

Moore, who was excited to train with Alcorn, said she is one of the players who has benefited from the mental rewards of the training.

“ I feel a little bit more confident,” Moore said. “You walk in with your head up, and you know my defense is going to be off the hook.”

Solid defense has been Moore’s forte, and she said her skills have only gotten better since working with Alcorn.

But Johnson-Klein credits the training for far more than just a change in Moore’s mindset.

“ [Cophie’s] physique is unbelievable,” Johnson-Klein said.

Moore said she’s leaner and quicker, and her endurance is tremendously improved. Plus, she has a new appreciation for running—an activity Alcorn supervises on Tuesdays and Thursdays when the players don’t do boxing workouts.

“ Before I would never [run],” Moore said. “Running? No. I hated running, but it doesn’t have to be ‘I hate it’ anymore. I’m running for life now.”

Johnson-Klein said she’s anxious to see how the improved conditioning will affect the team’s on-court abilities when it officially begins practice Saturday, but Alcorn is certain the results will be positive.

“ This is not their profession,” Alcorn said. “This is something to make what they do easier.”

And neither Lane nor Moore said they want to make boxing their profession—especially after watching their first Alcorn fight.

“ It looked scary,” Lane said. “I’m not gonna lie.”

It was scary because Alcorn knocked out her opponent, Franchesca Alcanter, only 41 seconds into the first round of their Oct. 2 fight in Lemoore. The basketball team was in the stands.

“ We supported her,” Moore said. “We were yelling and cheering and screaming her name out. The whole team was there.”

The gesture was a complete surprise to Johnson-Klein, who did not attend.

“ Those girls went out on their own and bought a ticket to that match,” Johnson-Klein said. “I never would have said a word to push them either way. I just wished they could have seen a longer fight.”

Alcanter hadn’t lost in over three years and after the fight was quoted as saying, “I have never been hit like that. Lights in my head, flickering, knees buckling. I stood up and saw stars again.”

Alcorn, whose professional record is 17-0 with 11 knockouts, said any one of the women’s basketball players could now fight as amateurs, but Lane and Moore both said they have no desire to know what that feels like.

“ If I could just knock people out, I think I might do it, but I don’t want to get hit by anything,” Moore said. “But if I did go into boxing, [Jenifer] would be my trainer. I would work out with her.”

Although Lane said she puts more mustard in her punches when she’s going one on one with Alcorn, it’s because Alcorn is a good motivator.

“ I feel she’s a part of our coaching staff just as much when we’re on the court as when we’re off the court,” Lane said. “Boxing is the last thing I look at her as on my list. I look at her as more than just a boxer.”

And a member of the Bulldogs coaching staff is just another one of those roles.

“ She juggles everything,” Johnson-Klein said. “She’s a wife and a mother, and she’s really buff.”

Johnson-Klein said she’d be open to having the team train with Alcorn next year, but she wants to see how much the boxing betters the team’s basketball. Moore’s already convinced the pugilism has a positive effect.

“ We’re together. We’re sweating together, pounding against each other,” Moore said. “I think our hearts are going to be so big. I think we’re going to fight.”