Boxing champion works at Sudbury Regional Hospital

Date Published | Jun. 1, 2008

BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN

As a registered nurse working the graveyard shift, Amber Konikow spends her nights taking care of gravely sick and injured people in the intensive care unit at Sudbury Regional Hospital.

By day, she trades in her scrubs for boxing gloves, and takes out the frustrations of nursing on the punching bag at the Top Glove Boxing Academy.

Konikow, 33, is no ordinary amateur boxer. She is a two-time provincial and a two-time national women’s boxing champion. Her ultimate goal is a podium finish at the Women’s World Boxing Championship in Ningbo, China in November 2008.

“Sometimes after a night of treating people in the ICU, you can get kind of sad. There’s sometimes shifts where you can end up crying. With boxing, I try to work up an anger to try to release that emotion,” she said.

“I’m the only nurse who actually trains at the gym. Sometimes I go there and I’m exhausted and maybe I’m not feeling emotionally up to it because of a rough night. People sometimes don’t understand what I go through in my job.”

Konikow, who is married but has no children, started boxing seven years ago with coach Gord Apolloni as a way to get in shape and meet new people.

She got serious about the sport after her first bout, which took place in Italy in May 2002. Even though she lost the bout, received a black eye and bloody nose and broke her hand from punching the wrong way, she was hooked.

“I remember walking in the ring, and I was just so happy to be there. People were cheering as I walked in and I felt that build-up of anxiety. It was like a release,” she said. “Despite the fact that I lost and I broke my hand, I still felt very good and decided it was something that I had to keep on doing.”

After that first bout, Konikow has never been seriously injured. Amateur boxing is extremely safe, she said, because the competitors wear padded head gear, and the referees stop the fight if one of the competitors is unsteady on his or her feet.

It’s sometimes difficult for her to balance a full-time nursing job with the demands of being a national champion boxer. She’s learned the hard way that she can’t sacrifice sleep for more training time.

“I’ve done it before where I’ve trained in the morning and trained in the afternoon, I don’t take a nap, and then I go to work. Boy, then I’m tired, and I’m not alert enough. I’m like, ‘Oh, I don’t like this’,” she said.

“I made sure I didn’t do that again. I try to get in at least six hours of sleep per day. Learning how to do this has been trial and error.”

Because boxers are not allowed to compete at the international level after they turn 34, Konikow plans to retire from competition after the world championships in November and start coaching.

She said she will continue to train as a boxer even after she retires because being in great physical shape helps her keep up with the demands of her job.

Even as a little girl, Konikow dreamed about becoming a registered nurse. After graduating from Cambrian College’s nursing program, she worked in a variety of communities, including Little Current, Sudbury, Washington, D.C, and Oshawa.

During her latest stint at Sudbury Regional Hospital, Konikow has trained to become part of the hospital’s Critical Call Response Team (CCRT).

If a nurse on the floor feels a patient’s condition is deteriorating rapidly, she calls in the team, which does an assessment, consults with an intensive care doctor, and provides treatment.

“It saves lives. Absolutely. Or it saves the patient from getting into a worse situation where they may not be able to get out of it again. I find that very rewarding.”

Konikow said she’s had nothing but positive responses from co-workers who find out about her boxing career. Patients also occasionally find out about her hobby.

“I don’t tell my patients. I don’t say ‘Yes, I’m a two-time Canadian national champion.’ I just don’t make it an issue,” she said.

“But my co-workers will. Some of the other nurses will say ‘You’re being taken care of by a champion boxer.’ The patients usually say ‘Wow, that’s really neat’ and they’ll ask questions. Sometimes they’ll say ‘You’re too pretty to be a boxer.’ They’re funny.”