When students in the Purple Gloves club at St. Thomas get stressed out, they don’t look to Netflix or the library’s therapy dog program for relief; they take to punching bags.

The Purple Gloves Boxing and Jiu Jitsu club began about five years ago when several students showed interest in learning how to box. Faculty adviser and St. Thomas softball coach John Tschida supported the club from its beginning, initially giving lessons and later stepping back to advise the club’s leaders.

“It’s not a club where you compete and hit each other in the head,” Tschida said. “It’s about self-defense … not offense. You don’t use this aggressively, you use it to protect yourself or somebody else.”

Although the club does not promote itself as self-defense training – the student instructors are not self-defense certified – Tschida said it teaches basic skills that may be useful while trying to protect oneself.

“(After) one of the first classes I taught … this kid came in all black and blue and I’m thinking ‘he took whatever we taught and tried it on somebody and got his butt kicked,’” Tschida said. “But in reality somebody stole his wallet, and they beat him up. And at that time had he been in a class, maybe three weeks into it, he maybe would have been able to protect himself.”

Senior Ian Jordan is president of the club and teaches the boxing portion of the sessions. Jordan said that as a freshman Purple Gloves helped him to make a connection to the campus. He hopes it will have the same effect on other students.

“St. Thomas is sometimes called a suitcase campus but for me freshman year (Purple Gloves) really helped me to stay on campus and stay engaged,” Jordan said. “It helped me to get something out of the college experience – not just going home every weekend.

Jordan has seen the group dynamic change each year. This year, he is excited about the large numbers he has seen coming in but hopes more female students will join in to even out the ratio.

“Since there’s fewer females in it to begin with, it’s hard to find training partners for them and getting partnered with guys is sometimes uncomfortable,” he said. “We’re trying to grow that to get more partners for them and say ‘we’re female-friendly, we’re not trying to exclude anyone.’”

Junior Zach Molloy is vice president of the club and trains club members in jiujitsu. He is also glad that so many people have shown interest in the club and expects it to continue to grow in coming years.

“Last year it got down to this small eight or six of us, but this year it’s stayed big so far,” Molloy said. “And next year, with all of the marketing were doing for it and seminars, it’s going to get bigger and bigger.”

From his six years of experience in martial arts training, Molloy knows participants will enjoy the variety of benefits that come from participating in the sport.

“First and foremost, especially with boxing but jiujitsu too, (the benefit) is the cardio. It’s the most intensive thing,” he said. “It’s good for confidence – it’s good as a human-building sport.”

Purple Gloves meets every Tuesday and Thursday from 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and on Friday until 8:30 p.m. Sessions begin with ab work, followed by training in boxing and jiujitsu and end with another round of ab work.

Freshman Meghan Konop joined the club with two of her friends and said that although she enjoys all aspects of the sessions, the jiujitsu training is, surprisingly, her favorite.

“It’s just so different – it’s a lot of fun,” Konop said. “We joined the club before we knew it was boxing and jiujitsu, so the first night when they were like ‘okay take off your wraps we’re going to start learning jiujitsu,’ I was like ‘woah, what’s happening?’”

In addition to getting a good workout in and having a good time with friends, Konop said she appreciates that Purple Gloves gives her an outlet for her stress.

“It helps that you’re doing a hard workout but you’re also having a lot of fun there because the instructors are super nice and funny, so it’s a stress reliever in both ways,” she said.

Margaret Galush can be reached at galu4637@stthomas.edu.