Before stepping into the ring, junior Olivia Meyer listened to music to get herself pumped up. She’d been here before.

Just a year before, the ISU boxing club member took home the national title at 147 pounds, so as she sat quietly waiting to face her opponent at the National Collegiate Boxing Association National Tournament, the nerves were not as bad as she thought they’d be.

But as soon as the headphones were off, out came the emotions.

“You feel good in that moment, but once you step into the ring, you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I can’t remember how to box,’” Meyer said. “It’s scary but at the same time it’s exhilarating and it’s not a feeling I think I could compare to anything else.”

Rewind to regionals just weeks before the fight.

Meyer was 5-0 with the ISU boxing club coming off her national championship run in 2014. Hopes were high in the offseason before she nearly broke her hand in a training exercise to measure the force of her punch. Sparring was out of the question during the summer as she focused on physical therapy for her ailing hand, so getting back into fighting condition would be no easy task.

“I came back and I was dying,” Meyer said. “You’re put in situations you knew you could handle at one point. Coming back in, I’d get so disappointed in myself knowing I could have countered that or done a lot better in that situation at one point.”

But that didn’t stop the reigning champion. After constant conditioning and a slow and steady recovery period, Meyer was set to face Sam Glaeser of the U.S. Naval Academy in regionals, hoping to improve her record to 6-0.

For Meyer, it was basically a look ahead into the nationals fight. Glaeser was one of the only other fighters in her weight class and was all but a lock to see her in the national championship fight regardless of the outcome at regionals. But figuring out Glaeser’s strategies and gaining some confidence was important.

Meyer won a 3-0 decision in Ames at the regional match, though the fight was anything but decisive.

“I’ll be honest, I had an extremely poor performance at regionals and I don’t think I should have won that, and I was really disappointed in myself,” Meyer said. “But at the same time, I was looking at it as the way she saw me at regionals was not the way that I fight and everyone else in that room knew that.”

As Meyer prepared to fight Glaeser for a second time in just weeks, she knew she had the upper hand. She described herself as a defensive fighter, saying she struggles with “brawler” types of boxers who use an aggressive style.

So Meyer and coach Jon Swanson decided to fight fire with fire.

“We changed our strategy where Olivia was going to be more of the aggressor, which she did,” Swanson said. “The second round, the Navy girl came out really hard, but the third round Olivia got the best of her.”

For Meyer, the fight was a blur. In the first round, Glaeser came out swinging, but so did Meyer. Swanson would say Meyer had the advantage, while Meyer was clueless. 

The second round, Glaeser came out aggressive again. Meyer’s 6-0 record was in jeopardy of its first blemish. But in the third and final round, the hard work and conditioning paid off as she was able to dodge and counter her way to her second straight national title for the club.

“After every round, you’re like, ‘Did I do okay? How did I do?’ because when you’re in there, you don’t know how many punches you’ve thrown and landed, you just know how many punches your opponent has thrown and landed,” Meyer said. “That was probably the hardest fight of my boxing career as of now. In that sense, I feel like I earned the victory.”

But even more impressive is the way in which she has dominated her weight class. The NCBA introduced the women’s boxing division just two years ago, making Meyers’ back-to-back titles unprecedented in the league.

As she prepares for next season, the to-be senior hopes to be back in the ring to attempt her third title in three years. But being 7-0 doesn’t make Meyer feel invincible or at the top of her game. With another year to prove herself, she’s getting right back to work.

“I think after that last fight with Navy we said we need to get back on our fundamentals here and get back to the game plan,” Swanson said. “Winning back-to-back titles is a tremendous accomplishment for any of our fighters and we hope to see even more going forward.”