Her opponent at the Babson fight night was her Harvard teammate Muskaan Sandhu, 18, a freshman, who had sparred before. No one likes getting hit, Ms. Sandhu said, but she liked learning that she could take a punch.

It made her feel she could do anything. “After the fight, I never felt so capable in my life,” she said.

Modern life — lived on screens or amid the constant distraction of screens — can feel isolating. She sees boxing as a way to engage with people. “You feel really human,” she said. “You feel a connection with the person you’re fighting. Like we’re in this together.”

Mr. Lake said he intended for Harvard’s club to join the National Collegiate Boxing Association, a nonprofit that provides structure and safety rules. The N.C.B.A. represents about 840 athletes, an 18 percent increase from a year ago, said the group’s president, George Chamberlain, who coaches the University of Iowa’s boxing club.

The well-attended fight night at Babson, which also included boxers from Brandeis University, reflected the growing interest.

Before it began, a volunteer passed out waiver documents. Most of the boxers immediately flipped to the end and signed. Mr. Jiang, of Harvard, appeared to be the only one who read it.

He was a mixed martial arts fan who resolved to try a combat sport in college. “I like the technique side of it,” Mr. Jiang said of boxing, “the science behind the sport.”

His fight plan, he explained, was to control the action with his jab and occasionally throw the right hand, to maintain good defense and try to tire out his opponent.

It seemed a solid strategy — though, as the heavyweight Mike Tyson famously noted, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

A Frontier Airlines plane hit a person on the runway of Denver’s international airport during takeoff, sparking an engine fire and forcing passengers to evacuate, authorities said.

The plane, headed to Los Angeles, “reported striking a pedestrian during takeoff” at about 11.19pm on Friday, the Denver airport’s official X account wrote.

Neither the airport nor the airline has disclosed the person’s condition.

“We’re stopping on the runway,” the pilot of the plane involved told the control tower at one point, according to the site ATC.com. “We just hit somebody. We have an engine fire.”

The pilot told the air traffic controller they have “231 souls” on board – and that an “individual was walking across the runway”.

The air traffic controller responded that they were “rolling the trucks now” before the pilot told the tower they “have smoke in the aircraft”.

“We are going to evacuate on the runway,” the pilot added.

Frontier Airlines said in a statement that flight 4345 was the one involved in the collision – and that “smoke was reported in the cabin and the pilots aborted takeoff”. It was not clear whether the smoke was linked to the crash with the person.

The plane, an Airbus A321, “was carrying 224 passengers and seven crew members”, the airline said. “We are investigating this incident and gathering more information in coordination with the airport and other safety authorities.”

Passengers were then evacuated using slides, and the emergency crew bused them to the terminal.

Denver’s airport said the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) had been notified and that runway 17L – where the incident took place – will remain closed while an investigation is conducted.

Friday’s episode at Denver’s airport came one day after a Delta Airline employee died on Thursday night at Orlando’s international airport when a vehicle struck a jet bridge next to an airplane with passengers onboard, as the local news outlet WESH reported.

Meanwhile, on 3 May, a United Airlines plane arriving in Newark, New Jersey, from Venice, Italy, clipped a delivery truck and a light pole, which in turn struck a Jeep. Only the delivery truck driver was injured, but the plane was damaged extensively and the NTSB classified the case as an accident while also opening an investigation.