SPOKANE, Wash. – Gonzaga Athletics is celebrating the 75^th anniversary of the school's only national title, the 1950 National Collegiate Boxing championship.
 
In the spring of 1950, Gonzaga was co-champion of the National Collegiate Athletic Association boxing tournament. Coached by Joey August, Carl Maxey was the 175-pound champion; Eli Thomas was the top middleweight champion; and Jim Reilly added team points in the semifinals.
 
Bulldog fans can reminisce on the title by visiting a display case in the Wolff Family Hall of Honor in the Martin Centre outside of the Rudolf Fitness Center. Gonzaga Athletics has plans to further recognize the NCAA Boxing Championship later this year.
 
Gonzaga was going up against some of the powerhouses in collegiate boxing, like Penn State and Michigan State. The Bulldogs were clearly an underdog. Some of the big schools had five qualifiers, but August had only three: Maxey, Thomas and Reilly.
 
All three had already won Pacific Coast Intercollegiate Championships in their weight classes. Their next challenge was simply getting to State College, Pa., the site of the NCAA Boxing Championships.
 
All three GU boxers won their first-round matches. Thomas made it into the finals – and then won his 155-pound weight class. Reilly, in the 130-pound division, earned some crucial team points before falling in the semifinals.
 
It all came down to Maxey. He faced a Michigan State standout in the finals of the 175-pound weight class. Both were undefeated in their college careers. If Maxey lost, Michigan State would win the team championship outright. If Maxey won, Gonzaga would tie for the championship with the equally surprising University of Idaho team.
 
Maxey won by one point and Gonzaga earned a share of its first NCAA title.
 
When the team returned to Spokane's Geiger Field, a crowd of more than 1,000 broke through the police restraining lines and carried the boxers across the tarmac on their shoulders.
 
Eligibility changes by the Pacific Coast Conference and a short schedule forced Gonzaga to discontinue boxing in 1952, a year when it was a favorite for national honors again.
 
Carl Maxey
"In a class by himself," was the way his Gonzaga University coach, Joey August, described Carl Maxey as a collegiate boxer. Certainly, anyone encountering Maxey as a boxer, or in later years as a lawyer and human rights advocate, recognized him as a competitor. Maxey excelled in football, basketball and track at Gonzaga Prep. In college, his undergraduate years were interrupted by military service, but his boxing record was unbroken – 37 bouts, 32 wins – and included two Pacific Coast Intercollegiate titles. With his final win for Gonzaga, in 1950 at Penn State, Maxey earned the NCAA 175-pound championship. His individual win secured a share of the national team championship for Gonzaga and came against Michigan State's imposing Chuck Spieser, a U.S. Olympian in 1948. Maxey was inducted into the Inland Empire Sports Hall of Fame in 1983.
 
A NCAA boxing champion, World War II veteran, and prominent Spokane attorney, Maxey rose to fame as a significant figure in the civil rights movement in the Inland Northwest. The first black student to graduate from Gonzaga School of Law and the first black law student to pass the bar exam in Eastern Washington, Maxey spent much of his career doing pro-bono work on civil and constitutional rights cases. Maxey was a larger-than-life figure in Spokane throughout his life, often taking on difficult and controversial cases.
 
Eli Thomas
Unique, in its dictionary definition of standing alone in quality, summarizes the accomplishments of Eli Thomas in his collegiate boxing career at Gonzaga. The university participated in the NCAA boxing tournament just twice, in 1950 and 1951, and Thomas won individual championships each time. On his way to these titles Thomas put together two undefeated college seasons. Thomas had a 13-0 record in 1950, that season culminating in a victory at 155 pounds over Pat Heims of the host school in the NCAA meet at Penn State as Gonzaga won the team championship. In 1951, the Butte, Mont., native won a second Pacific Coast Intercollegiate championship en route to the national meet at Michigan State where he won his other NCAA title by outpointing Dick Diaz of San Jose State at 165 pounds. "I guess mental toughness would describe Eli," one of his teammates said.
 
Jim Reilly
The key member of the three-man team that brought the NCAA boxing title home to Gonzaga in 1950, Jim Reilly won Pacific Coast titles at 130 pounds in 1949 and 1950. He lost a disputed decision in the 1950 NCAA semifinals, but his points were critical to the Bulldogs' title march. Nobody had a bigger heart as a competitor in the heyday of boxing at Gonzaga. He was active for 20 years in Spokane as a coach and counselor to youngsters in a variety of boxing programs, and was the unpaid director of the annual Inland Empire Golden Gloves Tournament. He also coached several nationally-honored amateur boxers. Always prominent as an official, Reilly was asked to referee several world championship bouts in the 1980's.
 
Joey August
Summarizing Joey August's life in sports: excelled as a boxer, coach, trainer, official and sponsor. Boxing in the 1930's, August won several AAU championships and then a Pacific Coast collegiate title at the University of Idaho. As a pro, he won 14 or 15 lightweight bouts. He coached winning boxing teams here for a dozen seasons – his 1950 club shared the NCAA championship. As a trainer, August gave his time and talents to multitudes of athletes at every level, ranging from the Spokane Indians of Ferris Field days to State B Basketball Tournament players. August gained national recognition as a boxing official and was invited to officiate at the 1960 Olympic Games. As to his unflagging sponsorship of area athletics, August minimized that over the years, stating he was just putting something back into his hometown. But a local writer once observed, "Joey was putting back long before he ever started taking out."
 
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