By Cliff Rold
Deep in the south of Texas, Harlingen to be exact, in one of America’s poorest counties, sits the non-profit Foundation for Valley Sports. For the kids that walk through its doors, it can be a home for dreams.
Dreams, after all, aren’t wasted on the young. Dreams that don’t come true sometimes can be.
Everybody knows somebody that meets that sentiment. The guy who would’ve, could’ve, should’ve. They’re still stuck at the moment where it didn’t go their way, existing without living. They symbolically hang around on street corners, or in the high school parking lot a few years too long after they’ve graduated. Dreams didn’t come true realized as bonds.
Thankfully, it’s the exception to the rule. Most move on, often finding a new path, the one always meant to be weathered. Others stay on the same path, finding their dreams by viewing them through a different prism. This is one of those stories, a story about two men making dreams that didn’t come true into new dreams for young people that need them.
For me, the story starts when I get an e-mail from former Light-Heavyweight contender “Iceman” John Scully in early September of this year, looking around for someone who might be interested in doing a story on an Amateur program being spearheaded by 1988 178 lb. Olympic Gold Medalist Andrew Maynard.
For Maynard and Scully, the story started twenty years ago at an Olympic trials tournament taking place when Cosby ruled TV, Reagan ruled the nation, and Tyson ruled the (fistic) world.
Those Olympic trials built a generation of American stars. A future World Heavyweight champion (Riddick Bowe), a Jr. Flyweight Hall of Famer (Michael Carbajal) and one of the most debated pound-for-pound kings in boxing history (Roy Jones) began their rise at those trials, and through medals at the Olympics that followed. Maynard joined them, exceeded them even, on the medal stand but both he and Scully fell short of the others professional standing. That didn’t change the personal standing they built with one another.
“As one of only two Caucasian members of an elite USA Boxing training camp that included guys like Bowe, Michael Moorer, Terry McGroom and Anthony Hembrick,” Scully recalled, “Andrew kind of took me under his wing that week and since he was ‘the man’ of amateur boxing in this country at the time it helped a great deal in me getting accepted and breaking the ice with all the other top guys in camp.”
The two would stay in touch from there forward, through professional careers that began in 1988 and ended just shy of one year apart between 2000 and 2001. Each would fight their share of big names across that span.
Maynard burst out of the gate at Light Heavyweight with 12 straight wins before being matched, probably too soon, with veteran Bobby Czyz in 1990. A seventh-round knockout loss was followed by six more wins before another stoppage loss, this time to 1984 Olympian Frank Tate in 1992. It was the beginning of the rest of the uneven rest of a career for Maynard, which included a shot at the WBC cruiserweight title against Ancalet Wamba later in the same year and a tough 1993 knockout loss to the legendary Thomas Hearns. He retired with a mark of 26-13, 21 wins by knockout.
Scully, who would go on to fight from Middleweight to Light Heavyweight in the paid ranks, missed the Olympics in 1988 but did leave the trials with a Bronze medal, and had similar ups and downs. He faced tough contenders like Tony Thorton and Tim Little, former World Middleweight champion Michael Nunn (a bout that can sometimes be seen on ESPN Classic), and made it to his own title opportunity, going the distance in a losing effort with the excellent IBF Light Heavyweight titlist Henry Maske in 1996. He retired with a ledger of 38-11, 21 inside the distance.
They were honest professional careers, careers more in common with the majority than the select. That neither fulfilled what must have been their biggest goals could have soured either man on the sport. Instead, one can find them almost any day in the gyms they work from now, proving just how much the game meant to them by spending their time bringing along the next generation of dreamers.
Scully coaches amateur boxing at LA Boxing in Glastonbury, Connecticut. Maynard helped begin the boxing program he coaches in Texas. Each speaks fondly of their days as amateurs and is doing their part to maintain the sports future by passing on the knowledge and experiences that one can only describe them as grateful to have had.
“Amateur boxing is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.” Scull stated. “I think a lot of boxers, even a Roy Jones, might tell you that. Looking back on your amateur days, that’s where it’s at. It influences everything…I can give you hundreds of examples of kids who it gave them self confidence, gave them pride. Kids that didn’t have anything; their identity was their amateur career, their Golden Gloves title. I have a thing on the wall at the gym, hundreds of names of boxers who came through Hartford. I can’t tell you how many guys I’ve seen come into the gym, some guy 62 years old, pointing at the wall saying ‘That’s me.’”
I asked Scully what it is that can still appeal to kids today in amateur boxing.
“I have kids that come from good backgrounds and kids that come from the bottom. Inner-city ghettoes; no parents; everybody in the house is selling drugs, doing drugs. We have it all. A Boxing gym is a place where it all comes together. Society comes together at the gym. You can go to Gleason’s Gym in New York and kids from the toughest part of New York arte sitting next to a girl from uptown.”
Scully’s work is paying off. Among others, he noted the accomplishments and potential of Joey Perez, a defending Golden Gloves lightweight champion in Western New England who is already sparring with established professionals like Jr. Featherweight Mike Oliver, as well as the accomplishments of former Nation Junior Olympic champion Sammy Vega. To help keep the dues down for the kids he works with, Scully coaches evening adult aerobic boxing classes in exchange for lowered dues rates for his amateur program.
Scully has an advantage in that his gym is part of a franchise of gyms, providing his program some economic continuity. Alex Vidal, head of the Foundation for Valley Sports where Maynard coaches, noted a “desperate need” for the type of outlet that boxing provides for the kids they work with in the Harlingen area. The Foundation would like to do away with what are already small dues, and doesn’t charge dues to the kids that can’t afford them, while continuing to look for government grants, donations and sponsorships to strengthen the program.
Vidal expressed a deep respect for the work Maynard is doing. “The way Andrew handles himself, he invites a lot of these kids from different backgrounds just wanting to give it a try. He has this contagious, positive attitude that makes kids want to follow him.”
That enthusiasm comes through when one speaks to Maynard. While he expresses some regrets about the directions his professional career didn’t go, it’s impossible to miss that this is a man with deep affection for the game. The life lessons that boxing can provide are lessons he seeks to teach in very pugilistic terms. “I tell all my fighters: I know you’re scared. I was scared every time I stepped in the ring, but it was a controlled scared. I didn’t want to get nothing broke, I didn’t want to get knocked out. But I knew I was gonna’ get hit. I teach defense but you’ve gotta’ get hit to win.”
Maynard continued. “Everything you do is a life lesson. If you don’t learn from it, you’re not benefiting from it.”
Maynard’s short time working with amateurs is yielding results and he’s seeing progress. “They’re making progress with the methods I’m trying to show them. It’s starting to work.” Maynard pointed out that the toughest part is getting the kids to learn to start a fight, likening it to the schoolyard familiars of two kids threatening each other by asking one another to throw the first shot. “Majority of the people, when they learn boxing they freeze up because of that same muscle memory. They try to hit the other guy but it takes a couple punches to wake them up. I was the same kind of fighter when I started.”
He’s finding willing, if so far only a small number, of students. Vidal noted a promising amateur whose family relocated so their child could work with Maynard and both he and Maynard mentioned young Hector Garza, who is on his way to his first Golden Gloves tournament.
Maynard, as he helps to form the dreams of his young charges, also hasn’t lost the ability to dream himself. “I love boxing and I want to be the first Olympic Gold Medalist to take a kid to an Olympic Gold Medal.” For the kids that will work with him towards that goal, they can be sure that they’ll have a teacher who knows not only how to win but how to get up and keep going when he doesn’t.
So will the kids that work with John Scully.
Both are lessons that can take them far beyond the ring.
And already, the two men whose friendship formed so many years ago when they still wore headgear and the hopes to hear the “Star Spangled Banner” play for them are talking about getting together again, this time for a joint meet between kids from Connecticut and Texas. It’s yet another goal to work towards, yet another way to say thank you to their roots.
The programs run by Scully and Maynard aren’t alone either. There are still amateur programs all around America. One might read that gyms aren’t as full as they used to be but that doesn’t mean they’re empty. The young men and women who occupy them, who work the bags, who learn to start a fight, who willingly suffer for their tomorrows, still come from the toughest parts of town and still need the identity boxing can provide them.
Wherever you are, whoever you are, reading this column today, stop and consider looking up your closest local amateur boxing club this holiday season. After all, it’s the giving time of year and chances are that any gym or program near you is in need of the dollar support of, as PBS puts it, people like you.
No one can put a price on a dream, but it never hurts to help with a down payment.
Happy Holidays to all of the readers and staff here at Boxing Scene.
Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com