Young Lancaster boxer adds national title to growing collection

Spoiler alert: She won.

On Dec. 18, Lancaster’s Mila Torres faced off against Danna Turcios at the 2024 USA Boxing National Championships in Richmond, Virginia, and won. It’s Torres’ sixth national championship since she began competing three years ago.

With Torres’ record — she’s 9-1 — it would be easy to assume that boxing and winning is nothing new for her. But Torres, who trains at Lancaster City Boxing Academy with her coach and father Will Torres, said there was a lot “new” at this tournament. She admitted she was “super-nervous.”

It was Torres’ first time competing in the 11- to 12-year-old bantam (60-pound) division. Torres, who attends fifth grade at School District of Lancaster’s E.R. Martin Elementary, is 10 but will turn 11 in May, which puts her in that division for 2025.

There were her new braces, which made her teeth sore and caused problems with her original mouthguard.

Finally, there was her opponent, Turcios (8-4) of Austin, Texas.

“Every time I fight it’s a different opponent,” Torres said.

In amateur boxing the brackets are often set only days, if not hours, before the match. Torres turns to Instagram to research potential rivals. The platform shows her who in her division “knows how to fight, what style (orthodox or southpaw),” she said.

“She does her own homework,” Will Torres said.

He also described what it was like to train at the tournaments. There’s a training room with a bag and a ring where athletes work out. Competitors both train and watch each other, he said. It’s a place to “put names to faces.”

The girls will even visit with each other, and work together. They are, he said, “a lot nicer than the boys.” If the girls are trash-talking, as the boys tend to, the coach said, “I don’t see it yet … they’re super-sweet.”

They are not sweet in the ring.

“It’s kind of like when we spar I take it easy,” Mila Torres said. But, once her opponent steps through the ropes, “we’re not friends — time to compete!”

She added, “It’s different in the ring (you) have to beat them up.”

Women in the boxing ring at all is still relatively new.

In 2012 women’s boxing made its Olympic debut, and 17-year-old Clarissa Shields of Flint, Michigan, put the USA back on the boxing map, winning a gold in the middleweight division.

In 2015, there were 3,873 active female athletes registered with USA Boxing, according to Michael Campbell, USA Boxing Senior Manager of Events & Operations. In 2024 that number was up to 5,564, a 44% increase in just under 10 years.

But male boxers still outnumber female boxers. At the 2024 nationals, 1,339 boxers registered and 810 bouts took place. Of those, only 157 (19%) were for women or girls.

Fewer female boxers equals lack of depth in the division, and fewer people to fight at competitions. By comparison, Mila Torres’ teammate Major Seth (18-4), who was 10 this past summer, fought four days in a row at USA Boxing’s 2024 National Junior Olympics in June.

The lack of competitors frustrates both Mila and Will Torres.

Mila Torres said she’s noticed other girls who train at Lancaster City, “only want to come to work out (or for) self-defense.” Her friends at school have told her that they want to come to the gym, but would never compete.

Training, she said, is familiar to just about anyone when it comes to sit-ups, pull-ups, running and “maybe punching the bag a little.”

But by training to compete she’s learned to, she said, “never miss days. Always work hard — not playing around — always be the best.”

Mila Torres is currently ranked No. 1 in her division by USA Boxing.