Feb. 6, 2023 Ravven Brown, the top-ranked female light welterweight boxer in the United States in 2018, traded in her gloves to become a San Antonio police officer.
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After making a name for herself as one of the nation’s best women boxers, Ravven Brown is wearing a badge and carrying a gun for the San Antonio Police Department.
Brown, 31, a light welterweight, was the top-ranked female boxer in her weight class in the United States in 2018. A year later, she qualified for the U.S. national boxing squad, Team USA, and represented the country in international competitions.
She graduated from the SAPD Training Academy in December and is now a member of the force, the department said on Facebook. Chief William McManus reposted the announcement on his Twitter feed.
Brown, a native of Atlanta, moved to Texas to play basketball at the University of North Texas in Denton.
She took up boxing in 2017 and a year later won the USA Boxing Elite light welterweight national championship.
Brown got involved in the sport almost by accident. She was about to ship off to boot camp in the U.S. Navy when her enlistment date was postponed.
“I then needed a job, so I started working” at the Eastside Boys & Girls Club in San Antonio, she said in 2019. “I overheard noise upstairs in the gym. I went there to check it out.”
There, she met boxing coach Jeff Mays.
“I saw her potential right away,” Mays told the Express-News’ John Whisler in 2019. “I told her she might want to hold off on the Navy thing. I said, ‘I might have another plan for you.'”
Brown’s dream of qualifying for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team and competing in that year’s Tokyo Olympics was shattered when she was sidelined not by an opponent but by kidney stones.
She was set to compete in the U.S. Olympic Boxing Trials in Lake Charles, La., in December 2019 when intense pain from the kidney ailment sent her to the hospital and forced her to withdraw from the tournament.
“It was a very low moment,” Brown told Whisler. “You work hard for three years, and from my first fight that was my goal. To not be able to have any control over what happened was pretty devastating.”
Brown “is proud to represent who she is in a professional field and wants to give that same confidence to the younger generation in her community,” SAPD said on Facebook. “Thank you Officer Brown for your dedication to serving our community.”