Once again, only Shanita and Julius showed up for class. They were late again, too, but I decided to stop grumbling about that. Shanita does get out of school earlier, but she sticks around to participate in activities there. Not much I can do about that. However, I reminded both of them that they now only have one month to get it together for the upcoming boxing show.
After a brief warm up and some shadow boxing, the teens were ready to spar. I've been trying my best to break Julius out of the habit of always backing up into the corners. Shanita takes advantage of that each time, while her brother curls up and takes the shots.
Both Shanita and Julius need to do more footwork drills as well. Shanita ducks and dodges punches, but she does some odd movements to do so. More than once she has asked me if she could do some moves like leaping into throwing punches. My standard answer to such questions is usually, "The referee will give a warning." At least she's not trying to do WWE or UFC moves unlike most of the younger kids.
Julius has a habit of crossing his feet while moving around the ring. I pointed it out to him. A second later, Shanita caught him with a right, and Julius stumbled and crashed to the canvas. It took several moments for Shanita and I to figure out if Julius was badly hurt, if Julius was bleeding, and to get him to get up off of the canvas. When he finally moved, Julius decided to sit the time out rather than participate in floor exercises with Shanita.
It appeared that Shanita felt bad about knocking her brother down. After checking again to make sure her brother wasn't seriously hurt, I concluded that Julius' pride was hurt more. The teens left the gym early after that. I hope the incident doesn't cause Julius not to continue on with boxing.
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