Boxing is more than just an escape from the chaos of the streets or the baggage of what’s behind to those who find their way into the gym, and ultimately, the ring. boxing can be the road – and has been for many over the generations in hard scrabble America – to the way in life.

That’s the story shared by Alicia Doyle in her memoir Fighting Chance, published in February of 2020, chronicling the young journalist’s unlikely emancipation from her life’s hardships through immersion into the “sweet science” of boxing. The book takes us back to the childhood and life that shaped her inner demons, to her amateur and brief pro boxing career, and the two decades since she hung up the gloves.

In this Scorecard Scribblings interview I try to share what I learned from her book, and what Doyle, now two decades removed from the ring, wants us to know.

“…in the end, I learned the power of dedication and sacrifice, and the personal rewards that come with faith,” Doyle writes in Fighting Chance. “The boxing ring is a metaphor for life, a place where the fight starts inward, and once the fight is won in the mind, anything is possible.”