Amelia Moore brings a little bit of home with her wherever she goes. Whether she’s in Greenbelt or Colorado Springs, city of the U.S. Olympic Training Center, Moore can be found whisking pancake mix and cooking food from her personal Mason jars for herself and everyone around her.
“My teammates laugh,” Moore said. “I always make pancakes. I’ve got my kettle and my Tupperware containers and I’m always cooking for myself and my teammates while traveling.”
This is Moore’s second Olympic run. In 2015, she made the Olympic qualifying tournament for the Rio 2016 games in Brazil, but had to withdraw before competing due to illness. She took almost eight months to recover.
“As boxers, we never take a day off,” Moore said. “I started working my regular job during that time and I remember sitting at my desk and I just was so bitter. Not bitter because I didn’t get my chance, but because I’d seen another world that I knew I was supposed to be part of.”
She had been the last seed, in eighth position, to qualify in 2015. From having competed in 14 fights before her first Olympic run, Moore now has over 80 under her belt. This includes international experience in five different countries and an international championship title. Now, Moore enters the Olympic trials in 2020 as the second seed.
“It was never a question,” she said, when asked about when Tokyo 2020 had become a reality for her. “[In 2016], once my energy came back, I found my fire again and that’s when I knew that this journey was not over, it had just begun.”
Although she is still in the Olympic qualification process, Moore is hopeful that she’ll be the single competitor chosen from the 60-kg (132-lb) weight class to represent the U.S. Olympic women’s boxing team.
“A good mentor of mine once said, ‘You always shoot for above the goal because that’s how you make it,’” Moore said. “Before it was, ‘I want to go to the Olympics.’ Now, it’s, ‘I will take the gold.’”
Moore said she’s been involved in combative sports for her entire life. Moore began martial arts and competitive karate at age 7 but got the taste for boxing in 2006. She officially started training in 2009.
Moore grew up in Maine, but said her love for the sport really kicked off when she began attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Although the institution did not offer a women’s boxing program, that did not deter Moore from making the trip from Annapolis to Millersville, Md., to train with her coach, the late Thomas Langley, Sr.
“I was sneaking off campus as a sophomore,” Moore recalled, laughing. “I just thought, ‘I know in my heart this is what I’m supposed to be doing,’ so I just kept following it.”
In February 2011, Moore had her first USA Boxing fight. It was the day after her 21st birthday.
She remembered the night of her birthday. “I had to weigh-in the next day and I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to have any alcohol.’ And everyone was like, ‘What is wrong with you?’”
Moore said she’d responded proudly, “I have a fight tomorrow.”
Now, almost a decade after that first fight, Moore said that her passion for boxing has only grown, but experience has changed her motivation in many ways.
“The biggest transition is changing from an emotional standpoint to fighting always in the honor and memory of other people,” Moore said. Langley died in 2015 during Moore’s first Olympic run.
“At the time I was dealing with a lot of change and a lot of hurt. I feel like that fueled me at the time,” Moore said. “You can fight with emotion, you can fight with anger, but with those things, it’s a short-lived flame. What outlasts everything else is finding out what is at your core and that’s where a lot of the passion comes from.”
Her time is currently split between the training center in Colorado Springs and her home in Greenbelt. However, Moore said that as a three-year resident of Greenbelt, the city gave her the sense of community she was seeking.
“It fit what I needed at the time, but it also fit my principles and morals. I love Greenbelt,” she said. “I love that I can go into the grocery store and everyone knows who I am. It has that hometown feel and the community really, really cares.”
With her eyes on Tokyo 2020, Moore said that she plans to bring this sense of community and her personality to the international stage as a way to inspire people around the world to break the cycles of their pasts.
“This has been a life journey for me and becoming the person that I want to be,” she said. “When you finally decide to take an internal stand and own everything you do, it’s really powerful. It’s clarifying and I feel like that’s been huge for me.”
Moore is taking her goal and her training in Colorado Springs seriously. “We train six days a week, but for me, I train seven,” she said. “I’m just a workhorse.”
To support her lifestyle as an elite athlete, Moore maintains two jobs – as an accountant and tour guide at the Olympic Training Center – in addition to her around-the-clock training. The majority of her free time is spent advocating for herself as a boxer or working with youth boxing and children in the local area.
When asked about her long-term aspirations as an athlete, Moore said she only wants to continue exceeding her own expectations. “Your focus has to be on one summit. Right now, that’s taking gold at the Olympics; however, I am open to any opportunities when they present themselves.”
Moore’s final test in the Olympic qualification process will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, at the Strandja Tournament that runs from January 19 to 26. A competitor and alternate to compete in Tokyo 2020 will be announced for each weight class on January 31.
To learn more about Moore’s journey, visit her website at ameliamooreboxing.com.
Brogan Gerhart is a student in journalism at the University of Maryland reporting for the News Review.