‘BAIT AND SWITCH’: A local boxing center produces champions, but outreach for at-risk youth remains its central mission

Photo/Mark Nash

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By Mary CatalfamoSenior Staff Writer

December 3, 2018

oxing programs at the West Area Athletic and Education Center are led by Chris Burns, the head coach. Before last Friday’s boxing lesson began, one of the boys showed a certificate of his good grades to Burns, who proceeded to read it out loud to the rest of the kids in his booming voice.

“I started boxing when I was about 11 years old and (I was) just kinda getting into fights in school and showed some extra energy, so my parents thought it would be good to get me into a boxing program,” Burns said.

Burns started out at the North Area Athletic and Education Center and began training to be a coach when he was about 17 years old. He now teaches GED classes in the morning — which are sometimes attended by parents of children in the boxing program — and then instructs the boxing courses and leads tutoring.

The kids have to get good grades in order to spar and compete, which Burns said helps motivate them in school. But he said people often question the method of teaching boxing to kids who may already fight in school.

“I try to tell them, well that was me. I was trying to prove myself getting into fights at school, but it was really that I didn’t have the confidence that I needed,” Burns said. “I didn’t have the self-worth that boxing gives you.”

At the WAA-EC, children from roughly the ages of 8 to 17 spar in the ring of the warehouse-like facility from 3 to 5 p.m. during the week and can attend tutoring sessions in the center’s classroom afterward.

Jovanni Rosario stretches with other children at The West Area Athletic and Educational Center before boxing practice. Rosario has been coming to the gym for two months.

Boxer Ray Rinaldi, an inductee in the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame, runs the boxing program at the center. He is also Burns’ uncle and trained him to be a boxing coach.

“Nobody fools around here. And there’s a reason for it,” Rinaldi said. “A coach is respected more probably than anybody on Earth.”

The Syracuse Common Council approved Rinaldi to purchase a tax-delinquent building at 301-303 S. Geddes St. — which neighbors the WAA-EC — for $5,000 in November. Rinaldi and his staff plan to expand the youth intervention program, tutoring and GED classes to the new building, as well as create a boxing program for the elderly and people with Parkinson’s disease.

The Daily Orange reported that former Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler publicly supported Rinaldi’s athletic and educational centers.

Ramanzi Abdalla, 17, practices in the ring at the West Area Athletic and Educational Center with a coach nearby.

“We are constantly looking for folks in the community to provide alternatives for our young folks,” Fowler said at a Common Council study session in October.

Rinaldi estimates that it takes three weeks in his boxing program to turn children who may have been kicked out of other after-school programs into dedicated athletes and successful students.

“We get the tough ones here. But in a short amount of time, you see some real life changing things going on,” said Patrick Fiumano, an administrative manager at the WAA-EC. “They start to think differently, act differently. Their self-image seems to improve a great deal.”

Fiumano met Rinaldi through mutual boxing connections. Rinaldi had a record of 28 wins and three losses as an amateur boxer, according to a Ray Rinaldi Foundation press release. His amateur boxing career was cut short when he was hit by a car, Rinaldi said. He was drafted into the Army that month.

Rinaldi said he became a coach with the Army’s 4th Infantry Division boxing team in 1954 in Frankfurt, Germany, where his team competed throughout Europe.

He opened NAA-EC on Pond Street in 1994 before expanding the program to 307 S. Geddes St. and opening the WAA-EC in 2005. Now, the program is expanding again.

“You get these kids at all different levels,” Rinaldi said. “I can’t say what type of kids I’ve trained. Honestly, the truth is I trained doctors, lawyers, I’ve trained everybody. They come from the same mold.”

The center has coached several teenagers to the Junior Olympics United States boxing team. This year, the center had four nationally ranked boxers, Burns said.

One of them is 14-year-old Amir Anderson, who won a silver medal at the 2018 National Junior Olympics. Burns said Anderson will compete this week in the USA Boxing Elite and Youth National Championships and Junior Open for a spot to compete internationally with Team USA.

Amir Anderson warms up before he gets in the ring for practice. Anderson is from Syracuse and has been coming to The West Area Athletic and Educational Center for seven years.

“I’ve been all over the country — I’ve been to West Virginia, Tennessee, Texas,” Anderson said. “In West Virginia this year, that was my first time making it to the finals. And I felt so excited. Even though I lost, it was a good experience.”

Anderson joined about 25 other kids during Friday’s boxing class, led by Burns and another coach. The walls of the center are lined with trophies and pictures of successful young boxers, as well as signs prohibiting drugs and stern warnings about keeping the gym clean.

More than 6,000 kids took courses at the centers from 2005 to 2011, according to Fiumano. Rinaldi and Fiumano said they’ve seen people who boxed at the centers as kids go on to college, become business owners and donate to the program.

“Although we’re teaching boxing, that’s not really what we’re trying to do here at the center,” Burns said. “We use boxing kind of as a bait and switch for them to come in and then they end up falling in love with the sport.”

Photos by Laura Oliverio | Staff Photographer