Boxing gym gives LIers a fighting chance
Joe Gadigian is a coach and mentor at the recently re-opened Westbury Boxing Club. Credit: Danielle Finkelstein
As a teenager, Frederick Samuels got into trouble for fighting. Now he's fighting for a second chance.
The wrong punches landed the Westbury native in jail by the age of 17. He was locked up for more than three years.
Today, the 27-year-old is working toward a G.E.D. with hopes of going to college. Samuels said he's found peace in the ring -- and a home at the Westbury Boxing Club, in the M. Phipps Sports Center on Post Avenue.
"It's a spiritual thing," Samuels said Friday as he prepared for a workout. "It keeps me out of trouble."
Yesterday, the 32-year-old gym held a ribbon-cutting ceremony to highlight its rebound from a near financial knockout.
It's the boxing club's role in the Westbury community -- providing a free, positive outlet for young people such as Samuels -- that politicians talked about most during the rededication ceremony.
Among those present were Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, Westbury Mayor Peter Cavallaro, county Legis. Robert Troiano (D-Westbury), North Hempstead Councilwoman Viviana Russell and state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola).
"There's no other sport that embodies the American dream," Mangano said. "It's all about self-determination."
Credited with leading the boxing club back from the brink of closure, Kevin Collins, 41, of Bellmore, is a former professional boxer with 18 fights. He trained at Westbury.
The gym had been having financial problems for years, Collins said, and when a private investor pulled out, it had to close for a while.
To raise money, he revived the Dillon Cornerman Foundation, named after the late Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon, a boxing fan who supported the gym with forfeiture funds when he was in office.
"Denis saw the gym as a way to help kids," Collins said.
As a kid, Collins needed help. Police arrested him multiple times for drunken driving and fighting, he said, and it was the "intervention" of boxing at the Westbury gym that helped him straighten out.
He's now a married father and is a sanitation worker for the Town of Hempstead.
The Village of Westbury charges the foundation nominal rent of about $100 a month. Other bills are paid through fundraisers and donations.
On Friday night, about 15 kids of all ages shadowboxed, jumped rope and pounded speed bags. The gym is open to kids from anywhere, not just Westbury. The trainers are volunteers.
"If you got a gym with the doors open and you're not charging kids, you can't lose," Collins said.
'They have plenty of time to get him if they want to' NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa sat down with Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. to discuss what it was like holding the Gilgo Beach serial killer in custody, Heuermann's penchant for Jack the Ripper and what his future likely looks like in state prison.
'They have plenty of time to get him if they want to' NewsdayTV's Ken Buffa sat down with Suffolk County Sheriff Errol Toulon Jr. to discuss what it was like holding the Gilgo Beach serial killer in custody, Heuermann's penchant for Jack the Ripper and what his future likely looks like in state prison.
