Boxing: Olayo-Munoz named Select Team captain

You can call her “Jos the Boss,” or you can call her “Captain Jos.” Las Cruces amateur boxer Joscelyn Olayo-Muñoz can legitimately answer to either.

Earlier this month, Olayo-Muñoz was named captain of USA Boxing’s Youth Select team after participating in team trials at the United States Olympic and Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. She made the Select Team for the second straight year.

Danny Melendrez, Olayo-Muñoz’s stepfather and coach, said she’ll head back to Colorado Springs in June and again in July in preparation for the Brandenburg Cup competition in Germany, scheduled for July 29-Aug. 3.

Melendrez sad he’ll be seeking to raise money for himself in order to travel to Germany for the competition.

Olayo-Muñoz is scheduled to graduate next weekend from Las Cruces High School, where she has run track —400 and 800 meters, relays — when not training or competing as a boxer.

The nickname “Jos the Boss” flows from the 16 national titles she’s won in the ring.

GOLDEN GLOVES: New Mexico amateur boxers took home silver and bronze from the Golden Gloves National Championships, concluded on Saturday in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Clovis’ Angel Sandoval, competing for the Colorado-New Mexico team formed at regionals in Roswell, lost to Texas’ Moises Rodriguez in the men’s 121-pound final. Sandoval won three fights en route to the championship bout.

Albuquerque’s Leroy Clark lost to Pennsylvania’s Dan Brown, the eventual champion, in a 198-pound semifinal. Clark won his first two bouts.

Earlier in the tournament, Peralta’s Alexa Garrobo lost by split (3-2) decision in her first-round bout against New York Metro’s Nicole Carpenter. Las Vegas’ Bradlee Jordan lost by unanimous decision to Upper Midwest’s Isaiah Abalan in his first-round bout.

NMAC: Larry Louick, a Las Cruces police detective, has left the New Mexico Athletic Commission — leaving the NMAC with four members.

Though the commission is allotted five members, it’s not unusual for it to function with four. It did so for years, in fact, and briefly was reduced to three — Louick, Ed Manzanares and Jerome O’Connell — after longtime commissioner and chairman Joe Chavez was let go by the state last August.

Monica Lovato, a former boxer and MMA fighter, was appointed in October, bringing the commission back to four members.

In January, after O’Connnell resigned, the appointment of Joe Cordova and former boxer Stephanie Jaramillo gave the NMAC a full complement of five. Now, with Louick’s departure, it’s four again.

Lovato and Jaramillo are professional members, having previous experience in combat sports. Manzanares, a UNM associate athletic director, and Cordova, the retired executive director of the New Mexico chapter of the ALS Association, are public members.

Manzanares was elected chairman at the NMAC meeting in January. Lovato was elected vice chair this month, replacing Louick.

Meanwhile, the New Mexico Regulation and Licensing Department, which oversees the athletic commission, has yet to hire a replacement for longtime NMAC executive director Richard Espinoza, who left the post in March after being promoted within RLD.