Teen boxer wins women's state Golden Gloves

Jamie Drubin first saw her in the Westbury Police Athletic League boxing gym, a speck of a girl attacking the heavy bag with composed fury.

"She knew how to hold her hands," the trainer recalled in a recent interview. "And she knew how to punch hard."

Drubin was intrigued. "I want to be a fighter," she told him.

Five years later, Dilsia Bonilla, a 17-year-old senior at Kellenberg Memorial High School in Uniondale, became the 106-pound New York State Golden Gloves women's champ, after a 5-0 decision over Neena Ajwani at Empire City Casino at Yonkers Raceway March 14.

She rocked the 28-year-old woman in the second round with a left hook that drew a standing eight-count. Joe Higgins, who now coaches Bonilla at the Freeport PAL gym, said the punch was "beautiful," but he tempered his praise: If his boxer had been in better shape, he said, "she probably would have knocked the girl out."

Bonilla relished the win but not necessarily the blow. "I hit people because I have to, because I need to win," she said one recent afternoon at her first workout at the gym since the fight. "In this sport, you're either here to hit or get hit."

On this afternoon, she was the lone female among three coaches and a dozen boys. The space was barely big enough for bags and a ring and smelled of stale sweat.

She changed in the gym office, not the locker room, the only concession made to her gender and the only one she wants. The boys "see me working, and they're respectful of that," she said.

Bonilla came into boxing as a "brawler," she said, employing a strategy of landing as many punches as fast as possible. Now, as Higgins put her through a pad workout that demanded progressively more complicated punch combinations, she slipped punches he threw to her head. "I'm thinking, moving around more," she said.

At Freeport PAL, which has produced highly regarded fighters such as Patrick Day -- who did well in Golden Gloves -- and Sean Monaghan -- who has gone pro -- Higgins preaches conditioning above all other fighter's virtues. For two months leading to her fight, Bonilla was on a grueling, six-day-a-week program that mixed distance runs and sprints with bag work and twice-a-week sparring sessions.

She'll need to commit to the program for longer than that to develop the fitness to throw punches aggressively through a four-round fight or to participate in elite tournaments that require multiple fights over consecutive days, Higgins said.

She'll also need to find sparring partners. Even as women's boxing readies for an Olympics Games debut in London this summer, women boxers are in short supply, and Higgins says it is difficult to find women who match Bonilla's skill and weight. He says there are about six women in the entire New York metro area with whom Bonilla can spar.

But with a handful of high-level tournaments in spring and summer he is optimistic about her future: "She'll stay as busy as she wants to stay, and she can be as good as she wants to be," he said.

Bonilla's parents, who were initially horrified that their daughter wanted to fight, have come around. "We put a lot of faith in her training," said Joaquin Bonilla, her father. "We'd like to see her go further."

Bonilla is ambivalent. She'd like to "go as far as amateurs would take me." That could mean national Golden Gloves or PAL championships, which last year were feeder events for the U.S. Olympic Team Trials. She also said she's "got a life outside boxing" that includes a pending application to John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a desire for a law enforcement career.

Drubin, a former fighter who has quit coaching and retired to Florida, said he hopes Bonilla fights in the Golden Gloves national tournament and then walks away from the sport.

"Here I am, 47 and basically a cripple with my neck banged up, cracked vertebra, arthritis in my hands," he said. "I don't want to see her like that . . . She's a smart kid, an educated kid, and she doesn't need it."