Women’s sports are not given as much attention as male sports in America. Nonetheless, South Asian female athletes are few and far between. However, one has risen amongst our own here in Georgia.
Female boxer, Sania Gandhi was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia and is currently a student at Georgia State University. She first became interested in boxing when she was dealing with bullying and fat shaming from family and friends.
“As a kid, I had really low confidence and got bullied a lot in elementary and middle school,” said Gandhi. “I wanted to feel stronger in my own skin because I felt defeated for so long. So I just showed up to a boxing gym one day and asked them to teach me how to fight.”
The lessons that come with training as a boxer can also be applied to other areas of life.
“Boxing is really big emotionally, you have to stay so calm in the ring when you’re fighting, so it basically trains you to also stay calm in outside situations,” she said. “Even when I’m talking to my friends and if they make me angry, because of how I’ve trained myself to stay calm inside the ring, it’s easier for me to do it outside as well. All the discipline you get from boxing transfers over to your life.”
Training to become a boxer also comes with many major risks and potentially life-altering injuries. Gandhi has had her fair share including a herniated disk, a concussion, a leg injury and a busted eardrum. While none of these scared Sania out of boxing, her parents were not very supportive of her participation in the sport when she first started. Boxing is considered to be a manly sport in South Asian cultures.
For a girl to participate, there is always fear that she may hurt herself to the point of no return, or begin to develop muscles that make her look like a man. The uniform alone is considered too liberal for a Muslim girl to wear as female boxers tend to wear shorts or clothing that may be deemed as showing “too much skin.”
“I was always getting in trouble with my parents, but I would still go train every day even though they didn’t like it. They would come pick me up from the gym and force me to get in the car. They were just scared for me and wanted to protect me,” said Gandhi. “But, when I started fighting in competitions all over the country and won most of them, they began to think this is pretty awesome.”
Sania is also a full-time student working toward finishing her degree in Business Management.
“The way that I schedule my training is, I wake up around 5:15 a.m. every morning and I go to the gym and do strength training from 6:15 a.m. until 7:30 a.m. Then I go straight into the boxing ring and I box until noon,” she said.
She continued by explaining that following this she goes to school until about 6 p.m. and then goes home.
“It’s not so terrible because I have a routine going on. Sometimes it changes as well depending on what I have going on that day,” she said.
With such a busy schedule, she stresses the importance of getting her homework done on weekends for the next week ahead and emphasizes the importance of writing her schedule down as it helps her stay organized.
“I cannot procrastinate no matter how tired I am or even if I really don’t want to do it, I have to end up doing it. If I procrastinate I will fail,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll just dedicate one day of the week to sit down and get all my work done.”
After her boxing career, Gandhi plans to use her degree in Business Management to help her dad in Commercial Real Estate Development.
She said, “My dad came here from India when he was 18 years old and he had nothing. He built everything from the ground up and I want to continue his legacy.”
She also wants to start her own non-profit organization to teach women and children refugees boxing.
“Being brought down as a female and a Muslim it really hurt a lot you know. My heart goes out to Muslim females and children refugees, they’ve been through a lot”
She credits boxing for having helped her go through her own personal difficulties in life.
“I wanna teach other women so they can be stronger too,” she said.
Gandhi won the 2023 USA Boxing National Championships and is looking forward to trying out for the 2028 U.S. Olympic Team.
