Katelyn Hess is a local equestrian who trains horses in Wellington. But it may surprise you that the show ring isn’t the only ring that she gets in to compete as an athlete. She came back recently from a trip to New Jersey with a new souvenir — a championship boxing belt that she won in the Pat E. Johnson Masters Boxing Tournament held in Atlantic City.
Hess is a registered USA Boxing athlete and has competed at local sanctioned boxing events in Florida. She decided to take it up a notch and compete in a tournament series, so she entered the New Jersey Masters Championships and traveled to Atlantic City in her first-ever tournament event.
Masters boxing is for amateur boxers who are 35 and older, and is sanctioned by USA Boxing, the governing body for all amateur boxing up to the Olympic level in the United States. This tournament brought in more than 200 athletes from all over the nation, with the oldest athlete being 74. There were even amateur boxers from Canada and Australia registered to compete.
Hess competed in the female 128- to 132-pound weight division and was matched up against an experienced and tough opponent from Philadelphia who had won all of her bouts so far this year. Hess was able to dig deep and face her biggest challenge yet. She won and came back to Wellington with the championship belt.
Hess has utilized boxing training and strength and conditioning at local performance training program Fight Fit Wellington. She started her training in 2017 with coach Patrick Parsons as a way to keep herself in tip-top shape for her equestrian activities. She enjoyed it so much that in 2021, she decided to take her training program and turn it toward competition in boxing, and in 2022, she registered for her first bout as a USA Boxing athlete.
Now, just a few short years later, she has competed five times and is a Masters Boxing champion. She looks forward to continuing her amateur boxing career and hopes to compete in Florida Golden Gloves next year to try and make it to the national championships.
Hess has found such a passion for “the sweet science of boxing” that she even became a certified personal trainer and now also helps teach boxing and strength training to beginners at Fight Fit Wellington as one of the performance coaches while she still trains on the competitive boxing team. She proves that age is just a number, it’s never too late to start and that the sky is the limit.
