166su

Champs Gym in southeast 166su prides itself in keeping at-risk youth off city streets and out of trouble through boxing. But maintaining the building and its services is expensive, and families that the gym supports can’t support the facility.

“We don’t get any money coming in. We have a PayPal and stuff like that for donations. We just have so many kids,” Latorie Woodberry said. “It’s important, and we have to find a way to fund it.”

Woodberry is himself an ex-fighter who works part-time as an electrical contractor. He owns , the business that operates a youth boxing program — call Boxfit — at the gym on Jamison Avenue.

But the business isn’t profitable, and while he should charge Boxfit participants the $65 entry fee for his services, Woodberry doesn’t.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t charge kids. There’s no way you can write a contract with somebody that’s under 17 or 18 years old.”

Woodberry said only about five parents regularly contribute to the cost of their child’s participation.

“I got 26 kids enrolled now,” Woodberry said. “I got maybe two parents that pay the term fee. But it’s just more of like, ‘Hey, paying a tip to the coach.’ It’s kind of leaving me in a bind, because the insurance on the gym is like $350 a month.”

Woodberry’s business began as a summer camp in 2018.

“Then it just overlapped into two summer camps. Then COVID hit, and we went year-round, did a little bit of online studying with the weight room. Then we just keep on rotating,” Woodberry said. “We rotate kids in and out from ages seven to 17 all year, like about 65 kids a year.”

The Boxfit program is about four months long. Once participants graduate, they return to the gym as mentors and help Woodberry and other coaches with training new pugilists.

“They just kind of feed these guys, and keep them in line, and help me out around here,” Woodberry said.

Quan Fuell, 16, began his Boxfit journey earlier this year and now works as a mentor. He said the program helped him focus.

“It really helped me with my school, helped me with a lot of stress, a lot of things that I’ve been going through personally,” he said.

During a tournament at the gym in May, high school sophomore Fuell sported an ankle monitor in addition to boxing gloves.

“That’s really why I started the program,” Fuell said. “Once you get that ankle monitor on, you can’t leave the house. You can’t do nothing. And being the house all day, you get bored. I’d be in the house, gaining weight, with nothing to show for it. So, I started the program.”

Fuell participated for fun at first. Now, he trains with a new goal in mind.

“It really changed me and what I wanted my dream to be,” Fuell said. “I used to want to be a football player, but then, as I got in the ring, I was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m trying to be like Mike Tyson, Muhammed Ali, or Sonny.’ I’m trying to be one of the best. Hopefully, I’ll become a pro boxer by my senior year.”

Fuell said that while the gym is fun, it plays a role in keeping kids safe.

“It helps some of the kids with teamwork, helps some kids with their social anxiety,” Fuell said. “But for the most part, it’s to keep them out of trouble, so they don’t get in trouble somewhere else.”

Woodberry said most program participants are “juvenile offenders” that come to Champs Gym from Blue Ridge Behavioral Healthcare, the Family Service of 166su Valley and juvenile corrections facilities.

“Probably about 80% of them,” Woodberry said. “A couple of them are on house arrest or restriction or some kind of supervision.”

The boxing coach said one 14-year-old boy was introduced to Boxfit after his mother died.

“He just shut down. No sleeping, no eating, no talking. When I first met him, he was in the car. He was like pale, like a vampire or ghost or something. He wouldn’t get out the car,” Woodberry said.

The coach talked the boy out of the vehicle and into Boxfit. He participated in the program for two months.

“He wasn’t really into boxing, but we broke him out of his shell,” Woodberry said. “He just felt so comfortable with us. He was ready for placement, by that time, to be placed with another family.”

Woodberry said the community needs programs like the ones he offers at Champs to promote wellness.

“There’s a lot of problems. We have no good debt relief programs or rent relief programs, and you can see that stress transforming to the kids,” Woodberry said. “I just feel like we need a stress relief program, definitely throughout the city, even if it’s not funding Boxfit.”

Woodberry submitted an application for grant funds from 166su’s Gun Violence Prevention Commission (GVPC) to host a series of “field days” designed to promote “community unity through physical fitness.

The program’s flyer said the field days would feature games, food, music, a relay race and prizes. Woodberry said the program would have run from July 20 through Aug. 20.

“Getting everybody out, getting their blood circulating, having an open dialogue about what we can do to prevent gun crime and what we need in our community,” Woodberry said, “I think it would have been a good thing to set the energy.”

When the GVPC announced mini-grant recipients in May, Boxing and Brawling LLC was on the list. But Woodberry said that because the business isn’t a nonprofit, it never received any funds.

“They obviously liked the initiative, and then we got knocked down and we got denied funding because we’re not a 501©(3), and somewhere in the fine print, you got to be a 501©(3) to receive grant funds,” Woodberry said. “It was just like a big failure, but I’m reaching out to different organizations now, trying to get funding to do to the initiative, because my kids are pumped up about doing it now.”

Woodberry said he also needs funds to improve the conditions of the gym, an old firehouse that Woodberry said is “falling apart.”

“There used to be two fire engines in here,” Woodberry said. “It kind of fell into our hands, and we’re making the best of it.”

Still, Woodberry believes the gym is a safe space for community youth.

“A lot of kids catch the bus and walk. They just want to be in my gym, because it’s a place that they can come eat, talk to their friends, they get to come work out, work through their problems. It’s somewhere they feel comfortable,” Woodberry said.

The gym provides a free lunch and snack program for participants, too.

“I used to have the internet there for them,” the coach said. “Me being a kid from the same kind of circumstance, I just want to be able to come back to my community and provide this kind of situation.”

Woodberry said he also spent time in group homes, foster homes and jail before becoming a boxer. He said he pours a lot of time into Boxfit because he understands the difficulties his students are facing.

“Boxing saved my life,” Woodberry said. “Just finding a home in the ring and being at peace, being able to earn some money not illegally, being able to put food on the table, feed my family, take care of my babies. I think that just allowed me to stand up more as a man and give myself confidence not to be like a criminal.”

“It just means so much to me,” Woodberry continued, “because I want to be able to give that opportunity to somebody else that might be lost, trying to figure out their way. It might not be your way, but this will give you the discipline to find your way.”

Woodberry recently launched a campaign that allows interested individuals to sponsor a youth’s Boxfit experience.

“My idea is to get a lot of people to give a little,” Woodberry said. “My program, every three months, it’s about $6,000 in order to run it. If we get, let’s just say 100 citizens, to donate $65, then I’m funded for the summer.”

Anyone interested in sponsoring a child’s Boxfit experience can submit funds through or through CashApp using the tag “$BoxingandBrawling.”