It comes as news to me that I am a coach. But the email to my personal account starts, “Hi Coach. Hope you are doing well.”
Doing fine, thanks. Do I know you? Do you know me?
“I’m reaching out,” the email goes on, “because I’m interested in private boxing lessons for my child. I found your program online and really liked what I saw.”
I have a boxing program? Boxing!?!? Never have pulled on a pair of gloves and certainly never coached boxing, or anything else, for that matter. I did briefly work as a volunteer basketball referee for a PTA-sponsored league for grammar school kids. No fisticuffs there, though; only the occasional unintentional foul. Slap-on-the-wrist stuff.
Back to that email: “I wanted to check if you’re accepting new youth students for one-on-one sessions, and if you could tell me a bit about your training style, your schedule, and your gym location.”
Hmmm. Don’t have a style, nor a schedule, nor a gym. Don’t even have a basketball hoop above my garage anymore.
Interesting, though, that this wasn’t the first out-of-the-blue email inquiring about my availability to be a sports mentor. One was from a parent—apparently—seeking a figure-skating coach for a child. Another for a youngster’s guidance in lacrosse. Two more sports in which I never have participated.
As a career sports journalist, I have covered such events. On the staff of Long Island’s Newsday, I was assigned to multiple Olympic Games, which included chronicling the preparation and ultimate gold-medal success of 2002 skating champ Sarah Hughes. But I’m still not especially confident about telling a Salchow from a toe loop from a Lutz. The competition music was always good, though often reminiscent of classical compositions that accompanied Bugs Bunny cartoons.
Lacrosse? A bit like ice hockey, without the ice. Or the fighting.
Which brings us back to boxing which, I accept, offers inherent drama, with many vivid characters and compelling examples of the human condition. The sport has been a favorite topic for the best wordsmiths—Ring Lardner, Ernest Hemingway, H.L. Mencken, Richard Wright, George Plimpton, Norman Mailer, on and on—by offering its primal contest inside the ropes and crazy carnival world outside them.
But, frankly, I am mostly put off by the so-called Sweet Science. By any civilized standard, boxing is a ticking time bomb of physical and mental impairment, and if I were to offer any instruction to a child regarding the sport, I would advise absolute abstinence. I have witnessed pugilists attempting to separate an opponent’s soul from his body, leaving the “knockee” prone and unmoving, like some chicken who had just had his neck rung.
There is much bleeding in boxing bouts—and surely unseen internal damage inflicted. There was a 2014 compilation of chilling statistics by the Health Research Funding web site, that 90 percent of boxers will experience at least one brain injury during their career; that the force of a professional boxer’s fist is equivalent to being hit with a 13-pound bowling ball traveling 20 miles per hour; that, at any given time, as many as 40 percent of ex-boxers had symptoms of chronic brain injury.
The singular goal of boxing is to leave an opponent with little imaginary birds twirling over his head. There is, unmistakably, fortitude required of the sport’s one-on-one dual. But isn’t a brain a terrible thing to waste?
Meanwhile I found, by putting in a request with Mr. Google, there are various sources for identifying youth coaches. Coachup.com. Findsportsmentor.com. Icoachkids.org. Some good teachers out there, surely.
Myself: I don’t coach kids. No training, first of all. Which is not to say that I don’t believe sports is a fabulous outlet, a terrific benefit to young people—as long as they don’t get sideways in the conviction that it is only about winning. My daughter played field hockey, volleyball and cross country in high school and has remained physically active through adulthood. I run. (Sort of; not like in my younger days.)
If I had a training style, it would be: Have fun.
