Discipline, respect, and hard work: the Normal West Boxing Club’s motto.

As a considerably new club, led by English teacher James Rumps, The Normal West Boxing Club is gaining momentum and changing lives. 

The club was created to let students have an outlet outside of school and to teach diligence and patience.

Previous administration actually determined the sport was too violent back when it was called the Muay Thai Club.

However, a student approached Rumps during the spring of 2021, expressing her desire to join.

“Within 2 weeks I had a place for us to practice. I’d gotten some people to donate some equipment to us, and within 2 weeks we started a club,” Rumps noted.

Shortly after this, he saw a complete shift in this young, freshman girl. She committed to the sport and the lessons, and turned around her GPA along with her lifestyle. 

Today, the club continues to grow and gain more individuals.

The pace of the lessons are personalized by skill level and goals. 

“West’s boxing club is well versed in the beginner level class that’s mostly all new students, and then the one that would be more competition based will be students who have done this with me last semester or last spring,” Rumps stated.

 Kiaus Herbst is a junior and is also a part of the boxing club.

“It’s really good cardio, and you get to meet a lot of people,” Herbst noted.

“They don’t teach you just boxing, they also teach you kickboxing. If you want you can learn different wrestling techniques that can help you.”  

In fact, one of the key aspects of the club is the diverse training that comes with it. Different types of offensive and defensive skills are included in the practices to maintain the foundation of boxing.

“We have 42 lessons that are planned out that start with Dutch kickboxing, Muay Thai, and then when we get into level 2 and level 3… we do some standing Jiu Jitsu submissions where you can choke people out. So everybody’s in the same curriculum but just one is going to have a faster rate than the other,” Rumps explained.

Although the club focuses on helping Normal West students, there is also a personal motivation for Rumps, as well.

In fact, there is a special place for the number “67” in the boxing club logo.

This logo represents Rumps’ personal motivation to live past that age because no man in his family has lived past it.

He doesn’t want to pass that same “ destiny” down to his sons. 

The boxing sport had a large impact on the trajectory of Rumps’ life, and he tries to share those lessons with students.

“I know that [boxing] played a big role in my life, saving my life, it made me go a different direction than I was going. It’s just something that I hope to pass on to help all the kids out,” Rumps noted.

“I want to see a change in the student individually not really much to do with boxing or anything else but in regard to self-confidence and self-worth. The whole idea is that we are warriors for our friends, Warriors for our families and Warriors for our own selves.” 

There are many key life lessons for participants to use in the club as well as in the halls of Normal West and beyond.

For one, respect is a key lesson Rumps teaches.

“If you don’t listen to your teachers you’re not going to listen to a striking coach, which means you’re going to get punched in the face or kicked in the head pretty hard,” Rumps stated.

Its that outlook that not only helps to change the participants in the club, but that also motivates Rumps, himself, to keep coming back.

Even though the club has such an early start, Rumps wakes up at 4:00 a.m. to meet any participants, and he does the training alongside them to motivate them.

“I will do the workouts with them if that’s possible because no one wants to get shown up by a 47-year-old fat dude,” Rumps joked.

However, in addition to showing up for the students, Rumps also holds a high standard for the kids.

“If you allow yourself to lower yourself to someone else’s low expectations, you’ll never be successful in life,” he adds.

Students have learned to follow a structure in order to take control of their day-to-day mindset. 

“You should join boxing club because it’s something that really pushes your mental [strength] and encourages you to work harder. I’ve learned a lot of discipline,” Senior Austin Miller, a loyal participant, commented.

“We want to have high expectations because I want our kids to be the people that own the companies, not the people that have to work for someone that owns the companies. If boxing can help them get there, cool,” Rumps highlighted. 

The club keeps growing. It’s already “a pretty diverse club,” but Rumps always hopes to get more freshman students.

The Normal West Boxing club inspires people to “hold each other to a high standard,” even if that endeavor comes with some tough love.