Title-holder Monique Tucker juggles nursing studies with boxing. Picture: SYLVIA LIBER
After punching the bag most mornings, it's then back to hitting the books for Wollongong's Monique Tucker.
The 21-year-old will soon graduate as a registered nurse from the University of Wollongong but has managed to fit her studies and work experience around a gruelling training schedule for her other passion - boxing.
Her hard work has paid off with the petite lass claiming two state amateur boxing titles recently, and catching the eye of Olympic women's boxing coach Bodo Andreas.
The national coach picked Ms Tucker for an Australian Institute of Sport camp in Canberra this week, where a team will be selected to compete in New Zealand in November.
"I'd love to wear the green and gold in New Zealand," she said. "I'm very serious about boxing, and I'm very serious about getting other girls involved as it is great for everything from self-esteem to self-defence."
Ms Tucker has dabbled in running and Muay Thai but a knee reconstruction put an end to those pursuits and so she took up boxing.
"I love boxing," she said. "From a training perspective, it's always different and interesting and it's quite dynamic.
"A lot of people find it interesting that I am a boxer as I'm just a little girl. And I'm quite a 'girly' girl - I love dresses, and heels and love to get glammed up.
"People ask me if I'm worried that my face will get damaged but I've never even had a black eye from being in the ring.
"I've got a good coach and if you have that, then you learn how to defend yourself and so that's not an issue."
That coach is Illawarra Amateur Boxing Association president Bill Corbett, who spurred Ms Tucker on to success at the NSW Amateur Boxing Championships at Wollongong's University Recreation and Aquatic Centre recently.
"I claimed state titles in the 60kg and 57kg weight divisions, which was very exciting," she said.
Ms Tucker graduates with her bachelor degree in December and intends to do a graduate year of nursing in the neonatal intensive care unit at Wollongong Hospital next year.
"Nursing is my other passion. When you're boxing the focus is always on you - your training, your competitions; when you're nursing the focus is on your patients and that's nice," she said. "My mum is a nurse, and a very good one, so she's been an inspiration."
Seems there's a couple of familial connections to boxing for Ms Tucker, too.
"Both my grandfathers were boxers - my grandpa loves to tell ... how he gave a fella an upper cut and knocked him straight out of the ring," she says.
"I have a wonderful photo of my other pop, who died years ago, flexing his muscles in the ring with his boxing trunks on.
"I'd like to think he'd be proud of me."