Doing A Lot Of Rounds

Almost everybody showed up to the gym again.  Igor didn't come in.  A check of the attendance sheet revealed that there should be two more new men in the class.  One of them, Patrick, who's originally from Nigeria, came in.

Andres told me he had planned to go to Seward earlier to get some sparring in.  Traffic was backed up because President Obama is in town.  "That damn Obama!" Alan, the conservative, joked.  Instead, Andres went to XSport and did some lifting and running.

Professor and Andres did another sparring session.  I didn't see much of it because I was observing the other people in the gym.  But I did catch Andres throwing a few uppercuts to Professor's middle section.

Later, Professor held pads for people.  In this photo, he was training Geniece (got her name right this time). Colonel is in the foreground, wearing his hoodie.

Here, Professor holds pads for Stephanie.  Both Stephanie and Vachel had fun teasing Colonel about his choices in music -- Colonel had brought in his iPod.  "Colonel is playing that old 1965 music," Vachel laughed.  She asked him if he ever changed the play list.  "Give me a list of what you want to hear," Colonel told them.  Stephanie checked to see if her phone could hook into the iPod boom box player; she was going to play songs from the Pandora web site.  Unfortunately, there was no way to set it up.

Alan was trying to convince Vachel to spar with me, but she told him, "Give me another week.  I'll be ready on Monday."  Instead, I sparred with Naomi and Sara.  Just as I stepped into the ring, my foot got caught up in the ropes, and I fell to the canvas.  It looked like a scene out of a TV sitcom.  "I haven't seen that happen to anyone in a long time," Alan said.

Naomi is four foot ten -- around the same height as both of my grandmothers and one of my aunts -- but she is a scrapper.  I told her I wasn't going to throw hard punches.  I let Naomi get a lot of punches in.  She was moving around very well.  It wasn't easy to catch her or back her into corners.  I was able to time her jabs and come over with my right.  That's something I normally don't do well, but I was paying attention that time. Sara has experience, but she hadn't sparred in a long time.  Sara was a little stiff in the ring, but once she loosened up a little, she was fine.  I lost count of how many rounds I did, but I think I did two rounds with Naomi and two rounds with Sara.  Not bad considering I'm still limping a little.

Sara and Naomi sparred for a round with each other.

This is a vision or wish board that hangs on the wall in my apartment.  I have a picture of a championship belt and a picture of famed trainer Freddie Roach on there representing some goals that I'd like to reach in boxing.  Right now, I'd like to see another fighter from Loyola Park win the Chicago Golden Gloves, and I think that Andres has a good shot at winning.  I heard Josh asking Andres if he planned to go pro.  "I want to be an actor," Andres said.  One of these days, I'm going to have to get to Second City and check out the improvisational acting group that Andres is in.