Ringing Up Successes

In Ventura, boxing training for kids as young as 10 is a serious business. About a month ago, five kids ages 10 to 14 who train at the city’s Westpark Community Center traveled to Kansas to compete in the Silver Gloves competition. Efren Juarez, 10, and Beto Juarez, 12, came home with national championship titles in their age groups.

They and about 25 other boys and girls, ages 10 to 18, are members of the San Buenaventura Boxing Club. This joint project of the city of Ventura and the Police Activities League offers kids free boxing instruction by professional trainers five afternoons a week at the center.

What’s serious about this is not just that these kids win championships (in the Silver Gloves finals, they must win every fight in a 10-fight series) but that they are so dedicated to their sport.

“Every afternoon, five days a week, we have more than 20 here training--sometimes until 8 at night,” said Fernando Cervantez, one of the center’s coaches. The other coach is Efren Juarez Sr., father of this year’s Silver Gloves champs.

The training isn’t kids’ stuff, either. For boys and girls, the daily regime is as follows: warm-up stretching, shadowboxing, jumping jacks, knee squats, running in place and pull-ups.

Then come ring work (sparring and working with a coach), shadowboxing, sit-ups, bobbing and weaving, crunches, half-stepping and leg exercises. This is followed by bag work and individual training such as rope skipping and working on a heavy bag and with a medicine ball. At the end of daily training come running in place, hip twists, neck exercises and shadowboxing.

The regime also stipulates that all boxers will do five or more push-ups during every rest period when they’re not doing the above activities or sparring in the ring. “You’ve got to develop before you get into the ring,” said the center’s director, Amy Crittenden.

Saturdays, she said, the club meets at the center and the members get on a bus to go swimming at the local YMCA.

“We welcome kids from other neighborhoods,” Crittenden said. She was making a point: In the past, the center’s location between Ventura Avenue and Highway 33 gave it a reputation as a dangerous place to visit. “Come check it out now,” she suggested. “Hundreds of kids come here every day for programs.”

The San Buenaventura Boxing Club was organized five years ago. Girls, who began joining the club only last year and now constitute a third of the membership. The San Buenaventura Club is not the only one in the county associated with the Police Activities League. Oxnard has a large program at La Colonia Youth Boxing Club. Members of both clubs are training to participate in a Junior Olympics boxing competition scheduled to begin April 16 in Norwalk, Calif.

BE THERE

San Buenaventura Boxing Club, Westpark Community Center, 450 W. Harrison Ave., Ventura. Membership is free, club meets 4-6 p.m. weekdays. Call (805) 648-1895.

La Colonia Youth Boxing Club, call (805) 385-7963.