The season ends where it began. The Penn State club boxing team is in Las Vegas competing in the National Collegiate Boxing Association (NCBA) national championships.

The team left Tuesday afternoon to go out to Vegas. Practice Monday had a light mood as everyone was anticipating and preparing to leave.

The tournament runs similarly to the Regional tournament held at Penn State two weeks ago. For the heavyweight and 195-pound weight class, all the champions get byes, for Penn State this includes Luke Runion(Heavyweight) and Eric Bradley(195).

"I'm pretty sure I've beaten everyone there fighting," Runion said. "The second or third time fighting somone is hard, I have to be prepared."

Unlike the regional tournament, nationals are a single elimination tournament, if you lose you're out.

Runion and fellow boxer Miles Rivas are the only two on the team with experience being at nationals.

Air Force and Navy, who have combined have won the last 32 tournaments, are the likely favorites again. Each of those schools is sending 12 boxers compared to Penn State's six and individual performances dictate the overall national champion.

"If we lose three guys the first night, we are out of the tournament," Penn State boxing coach Bill Wrable said.

Wrable stressed the fact that his men can not go into their respective matches wide-eyed. If they do that they will end up doing bad.

The saying goes "if it ain't broke don't fix it". Penn State didn't change a thing during practice the week leading up to nationals. The Lions managed to get in a few more sprints and picked up the overall intensity of practice. They must prepare for a three-day tournament instead of one night.

Also boxing is Rivas, Joe Smith and Patrick Sullivan. The team has an obvious goal of winning.

"We know what we are there to do, we are going to win," Smith said