Ring Master : Garcia Trains Young Boxers After Days Spent Toiling in Strawberry Fields

Eduardo Garcia doesn’t like his hectic schedule but he has learned to accept it. It’s the only way for him to make a living and continue his passion for training young boxers.

The 49-year-old father of seven and grandfather of six rises at 4:30 on weekday mornings and spends long, grueling days in the middle of a strawberry field.

He supervises fruit pickers and sees to it that they are productive enough to satisfy their employer. Garcia motivates his workers the same way he pushes young boxers at the La Colonia Youth Boxing Assn. each weekday afternoon.

When his day in the fields ends at about 4 p.m., Garcia hustles to the Oxnard Boys’ Club where he runs the youth boxing program.

The facility is old and rundown, with equipment more beat up than an old boxer. A couple of months ago, an insurance adjuster found that the building’s roof was not up to code. The structure was temporarily deemed off-limits, so Garcia trained boxers in the back yard of his home.

About 20 kids participate in the program and all speak highly of Garcia, a heavyset man with gray hair and a mustache.

“He’s the best,” said 12-year-old Fred Rodriguez. “He knows everything about boxing. He has taught me so much and he has really helped me a lot.”

Garcia participates in the training sessions, though he is physically drained after a day in the fields.

He doesn’t speak English, but most of the boxers are Latino and understand what he yells in Spanish as they jab away at his padded hands.

During a break from the drills, Garcia knelt at ringside and watched a pair of sparring boxers.

He entered the ring and stopped the activity to demonstrate, screaming over the din of punching bags and blaring Mexican music from a radio on the other side of the ring.

“If not for him, I wouldn’t be where I am right now,” said 16-year-old Fernando Vargas of Oxnard, who earlier this year became the youngest U.S. National Amateur champion in the 132-pound division.

“Nobody else has touched me. I’ve worked with him since I was 10. He molded me into what I am.”

Vargas, who earlier this month won a gold medal at the Olympic Festival and will compete in the Junior World Championships in Michigan next week, is considered one of the country’s best hopes for a gold medal at the 1996 Olympics.

La Colonia paid Garcia’s traveling expenses to the Olympic Festival, held in St. Louis, but he missed three days of work. The USA Amateur Boxing Federation will pay to send Garcia to Michigan, but once again he will not be compensated for missed income in the strawberry fields.

“I’ve won championships without him because he can’t always travel, but when he’s with me I feel unbeatable,” Vargas said. “I don’t know how he got that good, but he is good. He knows so much about boxing and he’s so good at teaching it.”

Melanie Ley, an official with the Southern California Assn. of USA Boxing, says Garcia is well-known among the hundreds of trainers throughout the Southland.

The athletes who work with him, she says, are well-disciplined.

“He is known as an excellent trainer,” she said. “The kids he works with all seem to be top level.”

Garcia trains Vargas, his star pupil, six days a week for no extra pay. La Colonia pays him $8 an hour for a 20-hour week to run the program, but he spends an average of 30-to-35 hours with the boxers.

There have been times when the financially strapped organization, in its 35th year, has run out of funds and can’t pay Garcia. But that has never interrupted his training schedule.

A couple of days a week, during his morning work break, Garcia picks up some of the kids in his truck and takes them to the beach to do roadwork.

Those who don’t have a ride after the workouts often get one with Garcia. He says he just wants them to be the best they can in a sport he loves.

“The money we give him doesn’t begin to pay for the time he puts in,” said La Colonia president Manuel Herrera, who boxed in the organization as a youth. “The kids just love him. He treats them like they are his own.”

Garcia got into training because of his sons. He learned to box as a 15-year-old in Guadalajara and competed as an amateur for two years before retiring.

“Now that I know so much about the sport, I think I would have been a pretty good fighter,” Garcia said. “But I really didn’t have the opportunities in Mexico that boxers have here. That’s why I taught my sons.”

He came to the United States in 1964 and found a job in a San Pedro fish cannery, where he saved money to bring the rest of the family to the United States.

About 10 years later, he moved to Oxnard and in 1981 started training his two oldest sons at home. Garcia also has four daughters and a 6-year-old son.

Daniel, 27, went 18-4 as a professional in the 135-pound division before retiring. Roberto, 19, a featherweight, is 13-0 and has 10 knockouts.

On July 29, Roberto will fight on the undercard of the Oscar De La Hoya-Jorge Paez World Boxing Organization lightweight title bout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

Garcia will be ringside, as he has been for most of his sons’ fights.

“We did all the training at home, but I went to local gyms so that my sons could spar,” Garcia said. “And that’s when some of the young boxers asked if I could train them.

“I’ve loved boxing since I was a kid. My goal now is to have a champion. I think Roberto can be a world champ. He has what it takes, and God willing, he can do it.”

Garcia also has high hopes for Vargas, a Channel Islands High senior who has been compared to De La Hoya, the 1992 Olympic gold medalist.

One of the things Garcia hopes to gain from training a champion is the money to open a gym in Oxnard. Roberto often trains at De La Hoya’s camp in Big Bear and Garcia has been offered work at a gym De La Hoya plans to open in Los Angeles.

But he’d rather stay in Oxnard.

“I don’t think I could do that because these kids could never follow me there,” Garcia said. “I would like my own gym so I can help some of them. A lot of them have great potential. I love to see that. . . . Just look at them.”

So it appears Garcia will remain a busy man as long as he sees the fire in young boxers’ eyes.