After all of his years of training, World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis still has far to go to match the ISU boxing club’s connection ratio of 100 percent.

“I’ve been here 26 years and I’ve coached 640 guys,” ISU boxing club head coach Terry Dowd said. “And 640 guys have graduated, every one of them.”

Students who make the trek to the basement of State Gym on any Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday evening to join the boxing club, will need to dispel any notion of emulating Brad Pitt in “Fight Club.”

Rather than developing tough guys, Dowd said he’s training his fighters “how to be a person, a professional person.”

Dowd said some of the professions of former ISU boxing members include doctors, lawyers, police officers and even FBI and CIA agents.

Currently, the boxing team has around 45 members, but Dowd said the number fluctuates. So do the reasons people sign on with the boxing club.

For someone like fifth-year graduate student Joe McElroy, the ISU boxing club offers him the competitiveness that had been absent in his life.

“I wrestled all through high school and I really missed it, and I missed the competition,” said McElroy, a three-year veteran of the program. “I just happened to walk through here one day and decided to try it out.”

Last May, after hearing about the boxing team through McElroy, third-year graduate student in animal science Doug Newcom started working out with the team as well.

Newcom missed a couple months this summer, though, as he also went to the World Conference of Genetics in France to present a poster based on his research for his master’s degree.

Dowd said McElroy and Newcom exemplify a motto of his: “school comes first, everything else is secondary.”

The minimum GPA boxers must attain to be on the team is 2.0.

Any member wishing to fight in any of the tournaments that the team competes in must have a 3.0 GPA or higher.

This season the club, a member of the National Collegiate Boxing Association, will fight in the NCBA Midwest Regional Tournament in Kentucky and a tournament hosted by the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.

Any ISU fighter who wins their weight class at regionals will fight at the NCBA Nationals April 3-5 in Las Vegas.

Coach Dowd said he’s optimistic about adding sophomore Mike Estus’s name to the list of 23 national champions the team has had.

Estus has compiled a record of 10-1 and nearly won the Light Heavyweight Golden Gloves Iowa Regional Tournament in Des Moines last May.

A standing-eight count against Albert Newbury kept Estus from fighting at the Golden Gloves National Tournament. But Estus, who played football for North Iowa Area Community College last season, may get his revenge in an amateur re-match in Sioux City on Oct. 5.

“I’m pretty sure I’ll beat him,” Estus said.

Estus, who transferred to Iowa State after meeting Dowd at the Golden Gloves Tournament in Des Moines, also has his sights set on competing at the NCBA National Tournament next semester.

The boxing team isn’t just for young men who have Golden Gloves experience, as Dowd said most Iowa State boxing team members join the club with no fighting experience. There are also ten young women currently on the team, including newcomer Liz Lynner.

Lynner, a freshman, joined the club because she wanted a good workout, thought it sounded fun and wanted to get into a routine. Respect for Dowd may help keep her involved on the team.

“I love coach; he’s great” said Lynner, “He’s a real motivator.”

Dowd is also a savior for the cost-conscious fighter, as he has been able to keep the semester fees at $25 by purchasing much of the equipment himself at local sports stores or garage sales. Dowd said occasionally people will stop by to donate equipment to the club.

Dowd said the team is open to all and doesn’t discriminate.

“We’ve had black guys, white guys, [Asian] guys, all kinds, it doesn’t matter,” Dowd said.

Make that nearly all.

“There’s no racists down here,” says Dowd, “If there is, they’re gone.”