Recently, I learned of an incident that took place a couple of months ago at the Chicago City-Wide Boxing Tournament, which is run by the park district. One of the kids lost a fight. When the second place trophy was handed to them, the kid threw the trophy down in anger. "I don't want that!" they yelled before stomping away. An attempt was made to give the trophy to the kid's coach. The coach had an even worse attitude about their kid's loss. They didn't want the trophy either.
Since I had no one in that tournament, I did not attend this year. After hearing what happened, I'm glad that I wasn't because I would have had to say something to that kid and their coach about their behavior. I don't tolerate that type of stuff at my gym nor at boxing shows and tournaments from my fighters. No coach should be condoning behavior like that from their fighters.
Just last year, I was at a boxing show where several young men from one gym kept grumbling about being "robbed" and being "cheated" after most of them had lost their bouts. At the end of the evening, the young men were still grumbling on their way out of the field house. I had enough of their comments and was about to put them in check, but two other coaches beat me to it. Their admonishing had no effect on the young men, who choose not to listen to reason.
The year before, I had to deal with someone in my gym who completely lost it when their fight was stopped during another boxing show. The referee, myself and the head of the city's boxing program all caught the brunt of that person's anger. As a result, that person was banned from LaFollette's boxing program.
It doesn't appear that two important lessons are being taught to young people these days. The first lesson is life is not fair. The second lesson is everyone is not going to get what they want every time. Those lessons should be started early and reinforced often.
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