University of Virginia Library

Boxing And Billy Williams

By Winston Wood
Sports Editor

Billy Williams...

Intramural Boxing Coach And Referee...

The Image As It Exists

In a passing glance local
businessman Billy Williams is the
last person in the world one would
suspect of being a boxer. Short,
barely standing 5-8, he is compactly
built, like a chestnut, but through
the course of conversation one
becomes aware that, like said
chestnut, he is just as rugged. As
talk continues he begins to look
like Pat O'Brian in the title role of
"Fighting Father Finnegan", and
by the end of the evening he has
taken a place along side Anthony
Quinn, James Cagney, Howard
Cosell and Joe Palooka as an image
of boxing as it exists today.

Dressed in a coat and tie he
seems more appropriate selling
books on the Corner than bouncing
off the ropes in a ring keeping one
pledge from murdering another in
IM competition. But, first
appearances aside, Mr. Williams and
boxing are synonymous at the
University, and have been since
1957 when he assumed the job of
Intramural coach.

In the years before World War
II, when Virginia's football teams
were just as erratic as they are
today and the basketball teams
were just as bad, intercollegiate
boxing was by far the favorite
sport. Old copies of College Topics
advertise tickets for ten dollars a
pair (remember this was during the
Depression) and you actually had
to have reservations to be certain of
a good seat. The University boasted
a fabulous coach in John LaRowe,
and for a few years was considered
a national power. As late as 1954
the Cavaliers placed contenders in
the NCAA championships and the
team was always considered a
threat in the annual Eastern Intercollegiate
Boxing Association
Tournament.

Grants-In-Aid were awarded to
deserving boxers and a number of
them were actively recruited, much
the same way football and basketball
players are recruited today,
except on a much smaller scale,
with one or two boys a year finally
coming to school here. It was Billy
Williams who gave the first scholarship
as coach in 1943.

The University discontinued
boxing as an intercollegiate sport in
1956 after running out of competition.
Each of the schools the
Cavaliers had met the previous year
had dropped the sport for one
reason or another, leaving Virginia

with nothing to do but drop the
sport too. By 1955 it had become
so hard to fill a schedule, with
schools such as VMI, Richmond
and VPI discontinuing their boxing
teams, that the Cavaliers ended up
travelling over 8,000 miles to meet
such assorted schools as Syracuse,
Maryland, Wisconsin, Miami, Penn
State, LSU and Michigan.

It was in the heyday of boxing
at the University that Mr. Williams
first joined the athletic department.
The boxing coach at McIntire High
School in Charlottesville, he was a
former South Atlantic AAU Welter-weight
champion. He started out as
head freshman coach in 1940.
Between that year and 1943 he
served at different times as varsity
and junior varsity coach. After the
war he served as referee for the
NCAA Championships from 1947
to '51 and officiated in the U.S.
Olympics in 1952. The intramural
Department added the sport soon
after it was abandoned by the other
schools in 1957 and since that time
the tournament has been the
highlight of High Point competition.
Mr. Williams acts as coach and
referee, beginning the season early
in February with practice sessions
and training classes.

When asked if he thought
boxing could ever return to its
former collegiate role he said he
thought not. If it was ever to
return, he said, he hoped it would
match school champion against
school champion, as if to carry the
Intramural program one step further.
Recruiting boxers today the
way other big time college sports
recruit would ruin the competition,
resulting in the same mismatches
that forced many small schools to
drop the sport in the fifties.

The championship matches are
scheduled for this evening at eight
and, as in the past, Memorial Gym
will be fairly crowded. Though
tickets won't be selling for ten
bucks a pair, reservations would be
a good idea for a good seat.

Since its inception back in '57
the boxing program had become
increasingly more popular - starting
out with 30 boys in its first year,
the tournament has grown steadily
every year, and this winter saw 160
people at the first practice. Perhaps
if the interest continues one day
that snake pit known as Memorial
Gym will see crowds as big for a
future Virginia-Carolina match as it
did back in the thirties and forties.
Like Mr. Billy Williams, one can
only hope.