In This Corner . . . a Brighter Future : Youth: A pair of boxing clubs in Escondido are reaching out to kids who might otherwise end up in gangs.

Six months ago, there was little organized activity for Escondido’s young gang members and other “street kids” on the verge of joining gangs. Now, two budding boxing clubs are slugging it out for the hearts and fists of the city’s youth.

Organizers, coaches and supporters say the competition is healthy as long as it is good-natured and doesn’t create a new type of “gang” rivalry among the boys.

Both clubs have the same stated goal: to provide youth with an organized physical activity and to help them achieve the concentration and discipline it takes to be a productive member of society.

“The best thing is to teach them something else besides boxing, to teach them something about life,” said Mike Adame, a 48-year-old former professional boxer from Oceanside who heads one of the clubs.

Adame, who helped launched a similar club in Oceanside three years ago, has formed the Tri-City II boxing club, after breaking with another club created a few months ago by Nicky Yu, a free-lance writer and word processor who has no boxing background but wanted to provide a constructive outlet for boys in her Escondido community. Neither club has more than about 10 regular members yet.

“I wanted to use amateur boxing as an activity to attract boys who have a lot of frustration, have a lot of energy and nowhere to vent it,” said Yu, a 40-year-old single mother.

Yu had been referred to Adame last fall to help him write a book about his boxing career and subsequent battle with the spinal meningitis that crippled him. The book idea fell through, but Yu asked Adame to help her start a boxing club.

They agreed from the start that the club should focus not just on boxing, but also on schoolwork and getting a job.

“Boxing is just a tool,” Adame said. “I teach them that they can walk away from boxing and still be an upstanding citizen. Not everybody is a good boxer. But everybody can be a good citizen.”

But Adame disagreed with the pace and style of the Escondido Boxing Club’s training and the fact that a secretarial services company run by Yu will be paid from 15% to 30% of fund-raising proceeds in exchange for administrative services.

Yu said the fees are justified because she can’t afford to continue volunteering 60 hours a week. At any rate, she added, the club hasn’t brought in much money and she hasn’t been paid anything yet. She doesn’t expect to get more than $1,500 a month.

So Adame began training boxers about two weeks ago at the St. Mary’s Catholic School playground, while Yu’s club has been working out at the Knights of Columbus hall. Neither club has a permanent site yet, although Yu was working on getting a former YMCA.

Adame’s fledgling club has about four regular members, one of them his own son, while Yu’s club usually attracts about seven boxers.

Adame, Yu and club supporters all said they don’t mind the competition, as long as the boys aren’t pressured by either side.

“I don’t want to see any rivalries,” said Fernando Dias, a counselor with Yu’s club who has a degree in recreation. “Who is going to lose out is the kids. I don’t want to see it tear the kids apart. They’re in the middle of it.”

“There’s plenty of room for everyone,” said Bob Mehan, a former San Diego probation officer who offers counseling and school help to members of both clubs.

“If they had 50 boxing clubs in town it would be great,” said Escondido Police Capt. Chuck Askegreen, who is on the Escondido Boxing Club’s executive committee.

That club got started in January, when Yu asked city and police officials for their advice. In March, she held a community meeting that attracted two former boxers who had competed in Golden Gloves amateur boxing matches in California and Florida. They offered their coaching services to Yu.

One of them, Jimi Johnson, 36, of Escondido, said he saw a need to get through to boys in danger of being lured into drugs and gangs.

“I watched these kids come in with the head bopping and thinking they’re so bad. But now they’re proud. They’ve got something to hold their heads up about,” he said, dripping with sweat after a workout with about eight young boxers.

Watchers of both clubs say Yu and Adame each has something to offer: Adame his vast boxing experience and Yu her administrative and community networking skills.

Adame had compiled a 39-4 professional boxing record. Before that, he had won several state Golden Gloves awards, was an All-Marine boxer and nearly made the Olympic team in the early 1960s.

It was several years later, when he was working as a sewage treatment operator at Camp Pendleton, that he contracted spinal meningitis after coming in contact with pigeon droppings. It took five years of physical therapy for him to regain the use of his right arm, to talk again and to learn to walk with a cane.

Yu lacks Adame’s boxing experience, but supporters say she has put many hours of work into the club and consulted various community groups for their input.

“I don’t think it takes somebody who’s got a whole lot of expertise in boxing,” said Manny Medrano, director of the Escondido Gang Project and a leader of the Escondido Youth Encounter. “I think that she has a lot of enthusiasm. I think she relates to a lot of the minority population” as an Asian woman.

Medrano said Yu tapped into a good potential membership pool when she presented her club idea to gang members and other young people at a gang project meeting.

“I think the kids need more choices in the community,” said Medrano, who now also sits on the EBC board. “Boy Scouts and the (local) Understanding Cultures Club are good, but not everyone is comfortable with them.”

Organizers say they’re not sure how many, if any, of the two clubs’ members are involved with gangs. Police estimate there are about 300 gang members in Escondido, most of them in three major groups.

Although boys at recent club practices said they are not in gangs themselves, some admit they have gang acquaintances or got into trouble before joining the clubs.

“I used to hang around with the gangs,” said Elias Gutierrez, 17, who trains with Adame. “I used to see all the trouble. It’s not for me. I said, ‘It’s not me.’ That’s when I started getting involved with boxing.”

Both Gutierrez and Jacob Moring, 13, who belongs to Yu’s club, have high hopes for futures in boxing, and said that gangs cannot be part of that plan.

“I used to get in fights,” said Moring, a student at Del Dios Middle School. “I had, like, an attitude. Then I got respect. Gangs are not for me, man--losers.”

Yu allows no gang colors, drugs or weapons in the Escondido Boxing Club. If a member’s grades drop below a C average, she tutors them. Yu attends at least part of each practice, she and the coaches said.

Askegreen said boxing clubs may not influence hard-core gang members, but they do affect “some youngsters who haven’t decided what they’re going to do with their lives, in terms of staying in school and discipline.”

Moring and Gutierrez both said their grades have improved since they started boxing because their concentration is better. Another EBC member, Martin Vidurre, a 20-year-old high school dropout, said he plans to get his diploma and would like to go on to study computers. He said club counselors have also encouraged him to read more.

“That’s why I try to get into some kind of group--to get off the streets,” he said.

Gutierrez said he transferred from Yu’s group to Adame’s because he likes Adame’s incremental approach to learning the basics of punching--studying one punch repeatedly to get it right before going on to the next.

Across town, Yu is searching for a permanent home for the club, and hopes to strike a deal with a mental health agency that has some spare room in a former YMCA.

The group is trying to raise money for equipment and uniforms with a fund-raising picnic June 20 in Kit Carson Park and with subscriptions to a newsletter Yu has put together that will outline the club’s activities and list job opportunities.