Ypsilanti's Raven Barnes earned a college scholarship fighting out of Ann Arbor's A-Square Fight Club and now has her sights set on the 2012 London Olympics.

Melanie Maxwell | AnnArbor.com

The air at Ann Arbor’s A-Square Fight Club is thick with sweat and anticipation as a recent training session nears its final stage.

The boxing club’s founder, Eric McGuire, believes no amount of heavy bag work or jumping rope can substitute for actually stepping into the ring. So rarely does a day end without sparring sessions and a few bloodied T-shirts.

Raven Barnes is home for just a few days from the Olympic Education Center in Marquette. There are posters and newspaper clippings celebrating Barnes’ achievements all over the walls of the club, but she is no exception to the philosophy.

After scrambling to find a mouthpiece, Barnes steps into the ring to square off with a sparring partner named Ray.

Her face shiny with Vaseline, Barnes steps to the center of the ring. Ray retreats to a corner.

He’s bigger than the 5-foot-3, 165-pound Barnes. He tells McGuire that he’ll move around so Barnes can get some work in, but that he doesn’t want to hit a girl.

Ray’s refusal to hit Barnes may be chivalrous. It's also foolish.

“Sure about that Ray? She’s gonna hit you,” McGuire says, then puts his head down and chuckles. “She’s gonna hit you hard.”

And she does. McGuire often criticizes Barnes for being too defensive. Ray wouldn’t be so lucky on this day.

First, Barnes works the body. Then the head. Then both. Once Barnes gets Ray in the corner, she unloads on him. A couple combinations to the head and body apparently knock the gallantry out of Ray. But by the time he tries to swing back, it's too late. Every attempt just exposes another vulnerability for Barnes to attack.

By the time the bell rings, Ray can barely stand.

Olympic Dreams

Ever since she can remember, Barnes wanted to box. When she stepped into A-Square Fight Club for the first time nearly four years ago, McGuire was fine with that. But he wasn’t going to sugarcoat things, either.

“I told her, there’s not a lot of females, and she was kind of heavy for her age, so I told her she would have to fight a lot of guys, and have to fight people with a lot more experience,” McGuire recalls.

But McGuire didn’t want her using that inexperience as an excuse.

“You don’t want to just go out there and lose and say, 'I lost because she has more experience,'" McGuire said. "So I told her, 'You’re really going to have to bust your butt and work hard.' She said she was willing to do that.”

Barnes didn’t shy from the fast pace. She thrived on it.

“Once you learn how to punch, it gets easier every day,” said Barnes.

By 2009 -- just her third year boxing -- Barnes won the Junior Olympic Championships and the Police Athletic League Nationals. In 2010, she placed third at the Senior U.S. Open Championships.

After graduating from Ypsilanti High School in 2010, Barnes became one of the first two female recipients of the B.J. Stupak Scholarship, which is given to aspiring Olympians to attend college at Northern Michigan University in Marquette while training at the U.S. Olympic Education Center.

Women’s boxing will be an Olympic sport for the first time at the 2012 London Games. Barnes has set her sights on qualifying for them.

“Everyone’s trying to get to the Olympics, that’s the goal of everybody in the program," she said. "There’s not people getting into shape, or just starting out.

“It’s very difficult. Very structured. There’s no playing games.”

OEC coach Al Mitchell thinks Barnes is still two or three years away from her Olympic aspirations.

"But I never take anybody's goals away from them," Mitchell said. "I think she’s two or three years away from where I want her to be, but she works hard enough. She could surprise me."

Like McGuire, Mitchell thinks Barnes needs to work on being more aggressive. In her short time up north, Barnes has already dropped from over 190 pounds to 165, which is the Olympic limit for females. The weight loss has led to a significant spike in quickness.

Between boxing and school, she stays pretty busy.

“It’s hard,” Barnes admits. “But it’s my career now. I have to go to the gym now every day. I can’t miss a day. I have to perform, to run every night. It’s a job for me, but I also have the job of school.”

It’s all worth it for Barnes. Along with her Olympic aspirations, she hopes to be a social worker and one day open a community center where she can help young people with boxing and school.

She’s on the fast track for that as well. She started at Northern Michigan with 58 college credits acquired while dual-enrolled at Eastern Michigan through Ypsilanti High’s Early College Alliance program.

“I hear from a lot of parents that I’m a role model," Barnes said. “So I try and do what I’m supposed to do with school and with boxing.”

Pete Cunningham covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at petercunningham@annarbor.com or by phone at 734-623-2561. Follow him on Twitter @petcunningham.