14-Year-Old St. Paul Boxer Natalia Young Wins Gold at the 2026 USA Boxing Junior Olympics
MSR editor Jasmine McBride profiles Natalia Young, a 14-year-old boxer from East St. Paul's Sir Boxing Club who won gold at the 2026 USA Boxing Junior Olympics, defeating the nation's No. 1-ranked fighter despite entering the tournament with only two fights to her name against opponents with 20 to 30 fights of experience.
Natalia Young didn’t just win a gold medal at the 2026 USA Boxing Junior Olympics. She made history doing it.
The 14-year-old boxer and client of Sir Boxing Club in East St. Paul entered the tournament ranked No. 2 in the nation with only two fights to her name. Every girl she faced had 20 to 30 fights of experience. None of it mattered.
After dropping the first round of her opening bout, Natalia did not lose another round for the rest of the tournament. In the gold medal match, she faced the nation’s No. 1-ranked fighter and dominated every round.
“To see that greatness and witness it… it was beautiful,” said her father, Thomas Young, who trained alongside his daughter throughout the competition. “I got teary-eyed. It was a sense of feeling overwhelmed, only because I saw her rise to the occasion.”
Natalia was emotional too.
“When they lifted my hand up, I started crying,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Dang, that’s crazy.’ My dad wouldn’t let me fight for the longest time, and I just started competing last year. So I’m like, look at me now.”
Natalia, who is Black and Puerto Rican, has been in the sport since she was three years old, watching her father train at the gym. Thomas, a former boxer himself, initially kept boxing between them as play, a way to build their bond. When the family moved back to Minnesota from Boston last year, Natalia pushed to compete and go to the Jr. Olympics. Thomas agreed, with one condition: she had to win the Sugar Bert tournament first. She not only did, but dominated, stopping her opponent in the first round.
“My biggest concern was making sure she understood the name of the game is hit and not get hit,” Thomas said. “But it also teaches them discipline. It teaches them to care about their body, their nutrition. It teaches them so much more than just getting hit. The gold medal is proof of her work ethic.”
Thomas also pushed back on the stigma that boxing is too dangerous for young athletes. To him, the sport is less about toughness and more about intelligence.
“It’s not about how tough you are, it’s not about how much heart you have, but [it’s about] how much IQ, how much skill you have, and how much you put in is what you’re going to get out,” he said.
To prepare for the Junior Olympics, Natalia says the focus throughout was stamina.
“You have to have good stamina when you’re in there,” Natalia said. “My dad would wake me up at like 4 a.m. and we would go to Lifetime to do recovery or cardio, and then later in the afternoon we would come to Sir Boxing Club and just train.”
More than 1,200 athletes competed at the Junior Olympics, and for Natalia, arriving at the tournament felt like stepping off a screen and into real life.
“I’ve seen stuff on Instagram about it, and it was cool actually being there, seeing it for the first time,” she said.
Ceresso Fort, the former professional boxer who founded Sir Boxing Club, said he always believed Natalia had what it takes, and that her win is bigger than one athlete.
“It is possible. She’s showing everyone that there’s a way,” Fort said. “I think we have a future Olympian.”
Fort founded the gym with intentional space for women and girls, a priority he said the sport too often overlooks. Natalia, he noted, is the embodiment of everything Sir Boxing Club stands for.
“People hear boxing and think, ‘Is this for girls too?’ But yeah. We’ve always been that way,” he said. “She’s a representation of the female boxers here. She takes it to another level.”
For Natalia, the gold medal is only the beginning. She has her sights set on nationals in December and an invitation to the USA Boxing Youth Team. At 14, she is still a year or two from the age eligibility threshold, but she is not slowing down.
“I feel like I’m way better now than I was when I was younger. Ten out of ten would recommend,” she said, referring to young women thinking about taking the leap from training into competing professionally.
For young women interested in training at Sir Boxing Club, Fort encourages them to reach out through the gym’s website or stop by in person. For more information on Sir Boxing Club, visit www.sirboxingclub.com/.
You can also follow Natalia Young on Instagram at @natalia.k.young.
Jasmine McBride welcomes reader responses at jmcbride@spokesman-recorder.com.