MARQUETTE – The legacy of boxing at the U.S. Olympic Education Center will continue this summer at the Olympics in Brazil.

Former USOEC boxer Mikaela Mayer clinched her spot in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics at an Americas Qualifier that ended last weekend in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Most casual fans of the Olympics would expect that winning the American boxing trials in November would be enough to earn her a place in the Olympics.

But possibly because women’s boxing will only be making its second appearance at the Summer Games, the field for Rio is severely limited and winning the U.S. competition was only one step toward getting a spot in Brazil.

Instead, Mayer, 25, had to work her way through a field of 15 other boxers from all over North and South America in her 132-pound lightweight division to earn one coveted spot in Rio, according to USA Boxing on the U.S. Olympic Committee website, www.teamusa.org.

“It definitely was a relief,” she said about the aftermath of Saturday’s championship bout, a unanimous decision over Victoria Torres of Mexico. “You hold your breath, just waiting for the decision.

“It was a very surreal feeling. There is so much adrenaline running through you in a match. It takes time to come down from that and realize what really happened.”

She talked by telephone on Wednesday morning from the U.S. Olympic boxing training facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where she will spend much of the next 4 1/2 months preparing for Rio.

She plans to make a brief stopover in Marquette this weekend – “I’m going to pick up my dog” – then visit her father in California before returning to Colorado.

Mayer will spend most of May in the central Asian country of Kazakhstan training for and competing at the International Boxing Association’s Women’s World Championships to be held May 19-27.

All of this is a prelude to the women’s boxing competition to be held at the Olympics from Aug. 12-21.

Ever since her USOEC days dating back to 2009, Mayer has trained with former USOEC, U.S. Olympic and Chinese Olympic coach Al Mitchell, who still is based out of Marquette at Al’s Boxing Club in a gym on West Furnace Street.

“Mikayla is my 10th Olympian I’ve trained, but first girl,” said the 72-year-old Mitchell, who even through the phone it becomes apparent that he beams with pride talking about Mayer. “She’s just grown and improved and gotten better.

“I didn’t think it would work the first year she trained at the USOEC. It just didn’t seem to click. But after the program ended, she came back. She stuck with it.

“About the start of 2011, I saw a big difference in her. She’s a hard worker – she just works so hard. And she listens.”

Mitchell said that repetition is just as important in boxing as many other sports.

“It’s got to become automatic; you don’t want to start thinking about you want to do while you’re in the ring,” the coach said. “That’s what we’ve been working on since 2012.”

In that year, Mayer just missed making the Olympics by one match at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

This time around, Mitchell and Mayer agreed that the boxer may have faced stiffer competition at the U.S. Olympic trials than at the Americas Qualifier.

“I defeated the No. 1, 2 and 3 ranked boxers at the Americas, but those rankings came from the Pan American Games, and I didn’t participate in that,” Mayer said.

In Buenos Aires, she opened with a TKO of Kimberly Gittens of Barbados at 1:59 of the fourth round on March 12, then won on all three judges’ scorecards against Carlina Veyre of Canada, the No. 1 seed, on March 14.

Against Kiria Tapia Rodriguez of Puerto Rico on March 17, she won on two judges’ cards with the third judge calling it a draw, before dispatching the No. 2-seeded Torres on all three judges scorecards two days later.

“I had no doubt by the end of the first round that I was going to win,” Mayer said about her confidence in the championship bout against Torres. “I was landing the cleaner shots. She’s aggressive, so I just needed to stay sharp the rest of the match.

“It’s always been ‘Another step, another step,’ having to win something else to keep a shot at the Olympics alive. Now I still have something in front of me – there’s the Olympic Games, the gold medal.

“I plan on going for the gold. I see no reason why anyone else could do it and I can’t.”

Steve Brownlee can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 252. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.