EVERETT – Bodies pack the smaller of the two Everett Elks Lodge ballrooms, saturating the air with adrenaline and anticipation.
The pungent smell of sweat is overpowered, just barely, by the copious amount of cologne so often administered by itchy teenage trigger fingers.
There are dozens of boxers -mostly boys and men, but a few girls and women.
Some dance in circles, solo, bouncing on the balls of their feet and punching the air. Each jab is accompanied with a sharp exhale, like the hiss of a rattlesnake.
Those who aren’t swinging at imaginary opponents are chattering excitedly in Spanish or English. Others yawn, pace or slump against the walls, cupping their headphones against their ears, the driving rhythm of rap music helping to ready them.
Weeks and months of agonizing workouts, fervent self-discipline and denied pleasures have all led up to this:
It’s fight night.
Along with boxers from south Everett and Arlington, fighters from Oregon, Canada and other parts of Washington state arrive hours early on this Saturday night to check in, weigh in and be inspected by a doctor. And, perhaps, to catch a glimpse of that night’s opponent.
The South Everett Boxing Club is here, embattled and recovering from the near extinction of its former home, the South Everett Youth and Community Center, which closed its doors earlier this year.
The club practiced out of the community center for at least 30 years as the nonprofit tried to stay afloat on grants and donations. Earlier this year, that shoestring finally snapped, leaving the boxing club on the street.
Coach Gary Hughes called the Everett Elks, which has hosted boxing tournaments in the past, to ask for help. The Elks took the boxers in, allowing them a basement basketball court for four practices a week.
David Frisk, the Everett Elks’ exalted ruler, and his father, Carl Frisk, says the Elks were happy to help.
“The lodge voted on it and decided to give the boxing club a home,” Carl Frisk said. “We all pushed this thing to let them in here.”
On fight night, some of the club’s more devoted boxers – Colton Heaverly, 15; Matt Hill, 19; and Mandy Brodie, 27 – are scheduled to fight.
Other members, including 16-year-old Alek Krallman of Lake Stevens, stop by the Elks Lodge hoping a no-show or dropout in the fight lineup will score them some ring time.
However, the roster fills quickly. Heaverly, Hill and Brodie will be the only boxers to represent the South Everett club at the Oct. 30 fight night.
The South Everett crew is easily the scrappiest looking bunch in the room. Other clubs have expensive boxing shoes and crisp, brightly colored uniforms, and even fancy team jackets.
The Everett club loans the boxers basic uniforms, which Hughes, of Seattle, brings to the fights in a duffel bag. Boxers change in the restrooms and return the uniforms after the match.
Their shoes are generic, their white-mesh jerseys are faded, and the thick-waisted blue and white satin trunks are simple – and a bit wrinkled. Good thing this fight is not about fashion.
The club’s boxers – who range in age from 9 to 35 – pay an annual membership fee of $130 for training and instruction, equipment use and to help with travel costs to regional fights.
The boxers who showed up at the Everett Elks fight were a core group; unlike more mainstream and traditional sports, the sport of boxing has many deserters.
“You can’t teach people to love boxing. It’s an acquired taste,” Hughes says. “I started when I was 29, and in my first spar a 16-year-old kid knocked me around that ring until I couldn’t hold my arms up. But for some reason, I went back the next day.”
Hughes said boxing may appear straightforward and effortless, but it’s “the hardest individual sport around.”
No one knows this better than Hill, the 19-year-old Lynnwood boxer. Three years ago, Hill dropped out of school to “party and play.”
The son of two teachers, he quickly earned his GED and moved on to a series of jobs, one at an oil refinery, another painting house numbers on curbs. He also started drinking, using drugs and getting into trouble with the law.
“It was stupid malicious mischief – teenage stuff,” Hill says.
He now works at Taco Time and is taking a biology class at Edmonds Community College. He spends his free time training.
He simply can’t keep up his old habits and be a successful boxer. Hill says the effects of cigarettes and alcohol are amplified in the ring, throwing him off.
“Boxing is the only reason I stay sober,” Hill says. “If this club closes, I’ll just fall back into old habits.”
Lake Stevens resident Mandy Brodie doesn’t box to stay out of trouble so much as to stay in shape and for the “shock value.”
The Safeco Insurance Co. employee loves her co-workers’ reactions when she tells them she is a boxer. Brodie says they usually give her – a feminine blonde who wears sweater sets and pantsuits – a hard look and say, “What? Why? Do you have issues?”
Brodie just laughs.
“I think everyone has their own reason why they’re here. For me, it just keeps life interesting,” she says.
Smarter and tougher
The 15-year-old Heaverly, also a Lynnwood resident, has been boxing longer than Hill and Brodie put together.
How many fights has he had?
“In or out of the ring?” he asks. “I’ve had six in the ring and about six out of the ring.”
The 115-pound boxer recalls a time in the school locker room when, as he was pulling his shirt over his head to change, one of the bigger kids socked him in the face.
“People didn’t like me,” he says. “I had the whole school on me.”
This year, even as his boxing skills improved, he hasn’t been in a single fight since school started.
“I’m a little smarter than I used to be,” he says. “I learned how to fight and be a lot more patient. There were a whole bunch of times that I wanted to quit. But I didn’t.”
On fight night, the three boxers have to wait a couple of hours for the tournament to begin. In a room full of fighters, it’s a wait that can quicken the pulse and make the blood pressure rise.
The South Everett crew changes into their uniforms, and Hughes starts to wrap each boxer’s hands in “a roll and a bit” of gauze. They wear padded boxing gloves, but the gauze further protects the hundreds of tiny hand bones.
Of the three boxers, Heaverly will fight first and Brodie will be second.
“You’re fighting a sack of potatoes,” Hill tells her by way of encouragement.
As Hughes wraps gauze around and around Colton’s hands, he softly speaks his instructions.
“If you keep showing him one thing, he’s going to switch it up,” Hughes says.
Colton listens intently, barely blinking, and nods.
Brodie sits down to have her hands wrapped as Colton paces with his black mouth guard protruding from his lips.
Hill will fight last. When he turns his palms up for the wrapping, he reveals a large tattoo of his deceased pit bull, Shine, on his forearm.
A fighter’s power comes not from the biceps, Hughes says as he wraps, but from lunging made possible by a strong big toe.
It is a sport of discipline, rhythm, strategy and give-and-take maneuvering.
Colton, wearing a groin protector and headgear, has Vaseline smeared on his face to prevent leather burn.
“Let’s go,” Hughes says, and the three follow him into the Elks Lodge grand ballroom.
Sticking it out
Family, friends and fans form an exuberant square around the boxing ring. They shout and pump their fists in the air. The only silent bystander is the glassy-eyed elk head mounted to the wall above the ring.
Colton’s opponent is taller, but Colton is in better shape. He has the lasting power to get his hits in for the entire three rounds – nine minutes.
He wins. His parents and two younger siblings cheer.
“I really enjoy it now, but every fight I’m totally nervous,” said his mother, Shannon Ferkingstad. “Once you come here and you see how safe they make it, I think my son has been injured more in soccer or at school than here.”
Brodie is next, boxing only her second ring fight. Her boyfriend and her father are in the audience, as is her mother, who refused to attend the first fight for fear of seeing her daughter injured.
Brodie spars with her opponent, a Tacoma woman, as Hughes yells at her from the corner of the ring. “Close the gap,” he shouts. “She’s tired.”
Brodie gets a bloody nose, but after three rounds she wins.
“Yes!” she exclaims.
Co-worker Anita Richmond of Maltby calls Brodie a warrior. “At the office, she’s so outgoing and friendly and feminine. We would not expect this of her.”
Hill prepares to enter the ring. His mother, Fran Hill, says it’s the first time she has seen him fight. As Hill and his opponent whirl around the ring, his mother poises halfway off her chair.
“Go, Matt!” she screams as he lights into his opponent.
It’s a close fight, but Hill loses.
In between bites of hot dog after the bout, he says he didn’t deserve to win. But there’s always the next time for a sport that has kept him out of street fights for two years.
“It has taught me that even if I don’t want to do something, to do it anyway and stick it out. I don’t have time to get in trouble,” he says.
“You train, and you learn how to fight, but you also learn how not to. In a way, this is everything.”
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@ heraldnet.com.
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