She's a 10-time boxing national champion at 16, working toward the Olympics: Meet Violet Lopez of Greenfield

Eddie Lopez comes from a boxing family. His wife, Brittni, did not.

When their eldest daughter took up the sport eight years ago, Brittni braced herself.

“I thought I was going to be worried about bloody noses and those things,” she said. But that’s not the way it has played out.

Instead, their concern became how to encourage a promising athlete without pushing Violet down her largely uncharted path.

How to manage a demanding practice schedule, travel, expense, their own jobs and the other challenges of three active girls, now aged 6 to 16.

How to provide emotional support to a teen struggling with loss: the loss of her routine during the COVID shutdown, losses in the ring and the loss of the grandfather who was among her biggest fans.

And now, how to maximize an experience that often seems unreal, the idea that their daughter will represent Team USA, that the Olympics are a dream within reach and that – of all the crazy things – she’ll throw out the first pitch at the Milwaukee Brewers game Sunday.

“I’ve seen presidents throw the first pitch at the Brewers game,” Brittni said.

“This has been a year of eye opening. We always knew it was possible, but it wasn’t so close that you could taste it.”

How far can Violet Lopez go in boxing? ‘There is no ceiling’

A junior at Greenfield High School, Violet Lopez explored other sports before following some cousins to the boxing gym at the United Community Center on Milwaukee’s near south side, where she fell in love with a pursuit not typically associated with 8-year-old girls.

Since then, Lopez has won 10 USA Boxing, Junior Olympics and Silver Gloves national championships, been the subject of a locally produced documentary that drew nationwide attention and led more young girls to the gym.

In December her latest national title earned her a spot on USA Boxing’s youth high performance national team, meaning she has been invited to the Olympic Training Center for a two-week training camp starting in late April, another in the summer and ultimately the world championships.

“There is no ceiling,” said Angel Villarreal Jr., her coach at the UCC. “It’s how far she wants to go. I firmly believe that. That’s what we’ve always done, that’s been our goal, that’s been the message and that’s what she’s done. … There’s nothing she hasn’t won that you could win at her age.

“I don’t want to sell an Olympic dream. That’s so political. But as far as, is she in that caliber? Yes. Yes. … That level of being a world champion and WBC, WBO, yeah, I believe that’s all there.”

A young girl at the United Community Center: ‘They made me feel comfortable’

Combat sports competitions for female participants are relatively new compared to their male counterparts. In the instance of boxing, women first participated in the Olympics in 2012, some 116 years after men.

Along those lines, the arrival of Lopez at the United Community Center and her emergence as elite were an oddity.

“There’s more coming in, but when I first came into the gym there were, like, two other girls,” she said in conversation at the UCC before a sparring a session. “And they weren’t girls that were dedicated to the sport; they came in and out for a workout.

“But everyone here just made me feel comfortable. The boys here, they treated me like their little sister. Once I got more into boxing and I was here every day of the week, they made me feel comfortable and then Angel, as well, made me feel comfortable.

“With ‘Shorty’ (longtime UCC and three-time Olympic assistant coach Israel Acosta) being here, it was so fun. It was fun being here. I enjoyed being here. That’s how I knew I wanted to continue in boxing, because I was having fun doing it.”

More girls take up boxing at Milwaukee’s UCC: ‘That’s the Violet effect’

Villarreal is family, a cousin on Eddie’s side. Perhaps that has made the journey easier. Not easy, but easier.

“I didn’t really have a blueprint,” Villarreal said.

Villarreal tried to be more cognizant that she was naturally different from an overwhelming majority of his fighters and, he said, the importance of “letting her be a girl” too.

“What’s best for Violet might not be best for the other 200 boxers, but that’s their problem,” he continued. “I’m working with Violet. And that’s how I treat all my boxers, as individuals. Every story is different.”

Together, the coach and fighter are doing something right.

These days, dozens of pre-teen girls move from station to station in the UCC gym.

“That’s the Violet effect right there,” Villarreal said.

“But definitely as far as inspiring, as far as the message of you can achieve and (breaking) barriers and that, yeah. It doesn’t necessarily have to be boxing. I feel her story in general is just about a girl pursuing what she dreams of and believes in, whether it’s this or soccer or whatever.

“This is a little more special, I think, a little more unique. Because she fights by herself. Her team is outside the ring.”

Violet Lopez’s priorities: ‘Boxing is basically my world’

Lopez takes advanced placement classes at Greenfield, and in summers she has worked in catering at the Milwaukee County Zoo.

Brittni points out these facts for a daughter who tends to be all business.

“Boxing doesn’t fit into my schedule. I fit my schedule into boxing,” Violet said.

Her day begins with weightlifting around 5 a.m., followed by school, then homework and then workouts at the UCC from about 4-7 p.m.

”Then I go home, eat dinner, do some more homework and go to sleep,” she said. “That’s my life on repeat.

“Weekends, boxing as well. Weekends, I go out of state for some different sparring or some different girls to box. Or boys. Boxing is basically my world. My life revolves around boxing. I plan my day around boxing.”

In Villarreal’s experience, most boxers who start at Lopez’s age fight competitively for two to four years before they max out or go in other directions. For someone to progress in the sport for the length of time she has is about a 1 in 75 shot, he figures.

Lopez started almost on a whim and then kept going because she liked it. Then the idea of showing that boxing isn’t just for boys became important to her and has only grown in importance through the years.

“Then our families … I was a teen parent, and what his family’s background is, we don’t have these big success stories,” Brittni said. “We came from working, struggling families, so for her it’s like, I want to turn that around. I want to show what the new kids, the new generation, can do. … Your limitations are what you make them and you can do so much more.”

The challenges of a female boxer: ‘I wouldn’t want to fight me either’

Lopez alluded to one of the problems she faces as a standout performer in a small community of athletes. There is little competition to challenge her and help drive her progress.

Anytime Lopez steps into the ring at her home gym, her opponent is male. Finding girls to spar involves a trip to Chicago if not farther.

By Lopez’s estimate, her 31 fights are perhaps one-third as many as the boys of a similar age who started boxing at the UCC around the time she did. Nearly all of them have come in tournaments.

It’s been seven years since she had a fight in Wisconsin, Villarreal said.

“I can’t really get any local fights around the area because there’s not that many girls and the girls that are here, they don’t really want to fight me because they know,” said Lopez, who fights at 119 pounds. Then she added with a chuckle: “I wouldn’t want to fight me either.”

On the other hand, everyone in her position faces the same problem. Lopez’s top challengers also struggle to find fights between the times they face one another in tournaments every three or four months.

“We’ll go in there with some boys,” Villarreal said. “All different sizes, all different styles. That’s kind of what made her what she is.”

Lopez draws some acclaim as ‘The Warrior Princess’

If there is one drawback to infrequent fights, Lopez said, it’s that the lack of action makes it harder for her to be noticed. While that’s a decidedly 2020s problem, exposure is something that could help her down the road.

Still, Lopez does better than most.

She was the subject of a documentary by Milwaukee filmmaker Vianca Fuster, “The Warrior Princess,” which follows several years of Lopez’s journey. The work drew acclaim at several festivals in 2022, winning the audience award for best short film at the Milwaukee Film Festival and best documentary at the Women’s International Film Fest. Highlights also appeared in a segment on NBC’s “TODAY All Day.”

In mid-March, Lopez and Fuster participated in a showing followed by a question-and-answer session and they hope to do more events of that type.

“It’s just my life,” Lopez said.

“Vianca really helped. … She started filming me and taking pictures and putting me on her (social media) stuff as well and she had connections.”

COVID and losses: ‘That messed me up even more’

While celebrating Lopez’s successes, the film does not gloss over her disappointment and the tears.

The start of the COVID pandemic touched off a downward spiral that had her on the verge of quitting before she figured out how to turn frustration into motivation and self-discovery.

“Obviously I had to stop boxing for a bit because the gym closed and we couldn’t find a place to work out, get boxing training,” Lopez said. “So I was off for three to four months with no boxing, no working out or anything. I was just livin’ life.”

Training outside was better than nothing but only went so far.

“And then our tournaments kept getting rescheduled and then they kept getting canceled again,” Lopez continued. “That was messing with me mentally, because I was preparing and then they’d cancel. Then I’d have to prepare again, and they would cancel it again.”

Fights had been scarce; suddenly there were none to be had, period. She went a year without a match then lost when she came back.

“That messed with me even more,” Lopez said. “Then I kept going to tournaments and I wasn’t winning and I kept pushing myself. I was trying 100% but I wasn’t getting what I wanted.

“I grew in the process. Physically, I grew, but I grew a lot more mentally because I knew I had to go. I couldn’t keep letting myself keep doing that, because then I wasn’t going to get anywhere. It was more up here in my mind. I was physically ready, but mentally I wasn’t prepared, which was causing my losses.”

Lopez also lost one of her biggest supporters when her maternal grandmother’s boyfriend died. Sonny had been around for all her life and was her grandfather, and his loss provided another test for her to overcome.

His memory will forever be close. Lopez got her first tattoo inside her left biceps last month. It says “Something in the Orange,” the name of a hit song by country artist Zach Bryan he liked and a nod to his favorite color.

“She doesn’t really like to express her feelings that much to everybody. So she would come home and have all these emotions weighing on her for many different reasons,” Brittni said. “We would just listen. That was the best thing we could do. Remind her why she was doing it. Make sure she still wanted to.

“There was always that option to walk away for her, just because I never wanted her to be doing something she doesn’t enjoy anymore. But she’s here because this is what she wanted. This is mainly her that pushed through that, on her own.”

Challenges of a family: ‘We’ve figured out a way to make it work’

That said, without extended family – Sonny and so, so many others -- Lopez wouldn’t have made it this far either.

Middle sister Aiyana, 14, competes in cheer at the national level. Six-year-old Aurora takes guitar and piano lessons. Violet drives to the UCC now, but the out-of-town trips for sparring or tournaments put a strain on two working parents pulled in three directions.

It’s rare when Eddie and Brittni are free at the same time.

“We have to choose and take time off of work: Who’s going with Violet? Who’s going with Aiyanna? Can we go at all?” Eddie said.

Yet they’ve known no other way. The secrets? Communication and adrenaline.

“We’ve figured out a way to make it work,” Lopez said

‘I want to go to the 2028 Olympics’

Life is taking another turn for the family with Lopez becoming part of USA Boxing’s youth international team.

Although she participated in a weeklong camp with the junior team two years ago, this time she will be spending more time at the Olympic training center in Colorado Springs working with national team coaches. There she will prepare for the youth world championships, which are scheduled for November, although the venue has yet to be determined.

“I took her to get her passport, and I’m like, man, I don’t have a passport,” Brittni said. “Just watching that in itself and why she was doing it was pretty cool. I’m happy for her.”

“That’s exciting,” Eddie said, “but it’s nerve-wracking at the same time.”

Outside the ring, Violet is still pondering her next move. She intends to go to college, but she’s not sure where. Regardless, the timing and travel have to work with her training and boxing.

“I want to go to the 2028 Olympics,” Lopez said.

After Paris this year, the ’28 Games are in Los Angeles.

“I will stay amateur until 2028 because we want to do the 2028 Olympic Trials,” she continued. “That’s one of the goals for me is to be in the Olympics. But I think after 2028, if that doesn’t work I’ll probably go professional, to be a professional boxer, and then I’ll go from there.”

An entire gym is in her corner.

“It’s just beautiful to see her journey,” Villarreal said. “I believe she can be anything she wants.”