Tomorrow will be a month since the boxing gym at LaFollette Park has been closed for maintenance. Next week is the last week of the winter session. I wanted to laugh when the field house supervisor talked to me about recruiting participants for the spring session. Neither the supervisor or I have been given any information regarding if the boxing gym will be operational in time for the next session to begin.
The numerous construction and maintenance issues that have taken place since late last summer are only a small part of why the boxing program is not very successful. I have to admit that the Austin neighborhood where the field house sits is a major factor. I was born and raised on the west side, and Austin was the last neighborhood I lived on that side of the city. It hasn't changed much. Residents still range from low-income to lower middle-class. Crime is still high, although when I was a kid, people preferred to use their hands more than guns. My mother, two younger siblings and I didn't know how lucky we were to live just a couple of blocks away from a major grocery store back then. Food deserts, where there is a lack of easy access to big grocery stores, is common on the west side (and the south side, too). Yet liquor stores and taverns are often just a few steps from each other.
When I go around to the other gyms for boxing shows and I see how well some of those boxing programs are populated, I've wondered why LaFollette's program keeps limps along. Some gyms that are in the multi-racial neighborhoods do quite nicely, as well as those in gentrifying areas. Places like Loyola Park, for example, benefit from having upper-middle-class people looking for a different exercise routine. That gym also pulls participants from Loyola University as well as Northwestern University in nearby Evanston.
There have been a few parents who appreciated that the youth boxing classes at LaFollette do not run late into the evening. Unfortunately, there have been gun incidents that took place while the other youth sports were still having practices out on the field. I know of parents who pulled their kids off of those teams after shooting incidents took place. I have also noticed some kids stopped showing up to the field house after the bullets start flying. I know some adults are hesitant to take the evening boxing class because they would rather not be caught in cross-fire.
I know there are other field houses with boxing programs who experience their share of challenges, too. But LaFollette seems to have more than most, and I have no solutions as to how to fix a neighborhood culture that appears to have not improved since the early 1970s. .
