166su

A boxing program focused on reducing violence and gang activity in 166su by teaching youth discipline and empathy has found its new home.

Boxing and Brawling, which runs the , has a lease agreement with the city. Starting Jan. 8, the program’s founder, ex-fighter and 166su resident Latorie Woodberry, will begin hosting activities at the Norwich Park Center.

“It’s been a process,” Woodberry said at the center on Thursday. “Me and my wife were over here with my daughter, and we were asking the city, ‘Hey, could we have a building to run our program in?’ And we just now got here, and it was right on time, because our relationship with Champs Gym had just fell apart. It was like no better thing.”

In May, Boxfit was operating in Champs Gym in southeast 166su. In June, Woodberry shifted his program to various parks around the city while training his young pupils outdoors.

“We did Washington, we did Wasena, we’ve done Eureka. We’ve done everything,” the coach said. “Mainly, we were concentrated in Washington Park, because I serve so many kids from Villages at Lincoln, and we ended up developing a relationship with those kids over there, and the neighborhood there. Home away from home was Washington Park for us.”

In mid-December, 166su City Council approved the program’s lease for the Norwich Park facility, which begins Jan. 1. Woodberry said about 40 to 50 youth are currently enrolled in the Boxfit program. Annual enrollment typically trends towards 100, but without a facility, some left the ring.

During the summer, when the program was cycling through the city’s parks, Woodberry said he lost one of his Boxfit participants to suicide.

“That was a big loss, not only for our program, but for the family, for everybody,” the coach said. Because of that loss, he hopes a room in one of Norwich’s buildings can be filled with counseling services for Boxfit youth.

“I want to be able to have a space where kids can come in and sit down with a counselor, maybe a licensed counselor, or maybe just sit back and talk to the mom that lost a child so that we can prevent that,” Woodberry said.

“As a coach, I hear it all the time, but I’m not a professional, and to have another set of ears would be great, just to have somebody sit there, and if a kid has an issue, that they can come and feel safe to talk to that person.”

In another space, Woodberry wants to provide program participants with a space to do their homework after school, “so kids don’t fall behind.”

“We can work with whatever issues are holding them back academically,” Woodberry said. “That way they can get that reinforcement here, too.”

Woodberry has worked with other nonprofit youth boxing organizations in Danville, Lexington, Charlottesville and additional cities in North Carolina to develop a “Champions of Character” boxing tournament circuit.

“We’ve got eight teams on that. Every two months, three months, we’re going to be either having a fight here or going to a fight,” Woodberry said.

The coach said the circuit is concentrated on building participants’ character, while competition leagues are more focused on training and success in the ring.

“I came up in those kinds of programs, but seeing the need in my community for the structure, I have a Champions of Character circuit where we don’t go fight unless our grades are right, unless our reports at home are good,” Woodberry said. “Because the boxing is secondary, even though it’s first to me in my heart. In the work, it’s secondary.”

Woodberry said his program has encouraged a female teenage rapper and trained “a male who’s still the top fighter around here.” Yet he believes his program is most successful when it motivates youth to make good decisions.

“These kids can’t be a part of certain things that go on in their neighborhood and then still be a part of this,” Woodberry said. “If they can choose this over a gang, or choose this over drugs or stealing, I’ll take them on free all day. That was some of the things that got me in trouble as a kid, just not having the structure, and not having the people that are going to take the time. I’m glad my wife sticks with me. We take the time.”

166su Mayor Sherman Lea said he’s proud of the progress that Woodberry and his wife have made in the last year, and he wants the nonprofit to grow.

“Those are the kind of people we want to keep motivated to help kids. That’s so important,” Lea said Friday. “I want him to continue. I want to congratulate him for his work, he and his family, for something that they’ve had to carry alone.”

Lea said city council continues to discuss other ways it can support the Boxfit program, perhaps through additional funding from the city’s Gun Violence Prevention Commission.

In the spring, Woodberry applied for a ‘mini-grant’ through the commission, which Boxing and Brawling was awarded to use for its youth-based programming. But the grant was withheld until Boxing and Brawling became a nonprofit organization.

Joe Cobb, chair of the commission and a member of city council, said obtaining the nonprofit status for Woodberry’s program was a “community effort.”

“I think that one of the biggest challenges for them as an organization is having community support. When you’re a nonprofit, you kind of look to your board to help generate that support in the community and find additional avenues for funding, whether that’s grassroots funding or grant-based funding,” Cobb said Thursday.

“We’re certainly excited about the progress they’re making. But I think where they could use some community assistance is in helping them secure that additional funding and support alongside what we’re able to do.”

Woodberry said that a full year of rent at the Norwich facility costs $4,800. But the program needs a boxing ring and equipment, boosting its fundraising goal to $10,500.

Boxing and Brawling takes donations for its programming through online fundraising platforms like , Cash App and . Additionally, sponsorships that include the placement of business logos on the boxing ring canvas or a corner post, plus promotions, are available for purchase.

“We have a funding template. We’re passing that around, trying to send it around in emails,” Woodberry said. “But to operate, we need $10,500, so we can have the equipment and the facility.”

The Boxfit program has served nearly 200 166su youth between the ages of seven and 17 in the last two years. On Dec. 19, Boxing and Brawling won 166su’s “Neighborhood Youth Volunteer Award” for years 2020 through 2022.

But Woodberry thinks the Boxfit program can do more.

“I would like less talk and more action. This program is outstanding. We developed it to be exciting and be a good exchange for kids, and it has been,” the coach said. “We definitely have the kids, and we definitely have the program, we just need the resources.”

Lea hopes the public will support the program when they see its positive influence on city youth.

“I hope that our citizens will say, ‘Hey, this is a good opportunity and a program that I can help financially,’ and want to contribute some things to it,” the mayor said. “We have a vision for the program. In the meantime, we’re going to do all we can do to keep it going.”

“I’m thrilled that they have a space,” Cobb said. “I certainly want to see them continue to be successful. Any of these kinds of programs, like the boxing program, that are focused on discipline, on creating a mindset that’s focused on caring for your health, your physical health, and your mental health, and your emotional health, and how all of this redirects your energy into a positive outcome, rather than a negative outcome, I think those programs are really important.”

“The main thing we offer is a place to come in and feel inclusion and gain confidence and be safe and develop good relationships, interact with each other, have empathy, and then on top of that we do boxing,” Woodberry said. “I’m a big brother and a father figure to the kids. If I can put that hat on, I don’t mind wearing it.”