Lords of the Ring

Hernandez comes out of the corner breathing fire, taking Dorsey-Spitz by surprise. The crowd erupts. "Come on, Frank!" midshipmen shout.

"Jab your way in! Jab your way in!" Searing yells from the sidelines, as excited as the audience. "One-one-two!"

But Hernandez quickly punches himself into exhaustion. Now the gloves are like lead weights; it's hard to keep them up, hard to keep blocking. Dorsey-Spitz counterattacks fiercely, briefly pinning Hernandez against the ropes. Vengeful punches smack into Hernandez's face and body. At the end of the third round, it is clear who has won the fight.

"You're learning, man," McNally tells a disappointed Hernandez as he strips off his headgear. His face is swollen, and blood trickles from his nose.

"I lost it in the third," Hernandez says. "I didn't have nothing left."

The other Navy boxers console him. "You had good defense, man," Amir Shareef, a national collegiate champion and Navy's best boxer, tells him. "You have a good foundation."

"Thanks," Hernandez replies. Then he walks off to change out of his sweaty uniform.

MCNALLY IS UPBEAT a few days later, at the first practice after Air Force. The Midshipmen won seven out of 10 fights. He congratulates his boxers and then sets up a television set at one end of the bleachers to review each fight. Hernandez takes the seat closest to the set. He and Searing dissect the grainy video of his bout with Dorsey-Spitz:

"Obviously, he has an advantage in reach," Searing explains. "He's throwing long, straight jabs in ones and twos . . . You need to get kinda down, slipping under." As the fight goes on, Searing says, "Trade jabs, you're always gonna lose."

"Yeah, I learned that pretty quick," Hernandez replies.

"Don't go back, go side to side," Searing says. On the video, Hernandez launches his third-round counterattack. "Now you're just getting a little frustrated, so you're throwing wild rights," Searing notes. "Small guys gotta get inside."

"I just gotta throw a lot more punches, I guess," Hernandez says.

"You just gotta say, 'I'm coming in.' " Searing advises. "Jab just like a battering ram."

The other matches follow. Some of the other boxers start dozing off, resting their heads on the aluminum bleachers. But Hernandez watches each fight with rapt attention.