Taking a hit to help Long Island's needy

All day Monday, Shawna Terrel-Vickers, a conscientious worker, had trouble focusing.

Terrell-Vickers, an IT coordinator at Edgewood-based military-airplane parts maker CPI Aero Inc., had her mind not on vacation or Thanksgiving turkey, but boxing.

And on Monday night, Terrel-Vickers, 33, was in the ring - where she is known as "The I.T. Girl" - at the Huntington Hilton, ready to square off in a three-round bout against freelance writer Robin "The Blonde Bomber" Percyz.

"I have a lot of butterflies in my stomach," Terrel-Vickers said before the fight.

Butterflies in the stomach was a common ailment at the 8th annual Fight for Charity, an event that pits business people against one another to raise money for the Long Island Community Chest, a Melville nonprofit that provides short-term financial support to needy individuals and families. Most of the 20-odd fighters felt fluttering.

"I'm not a fighter," David Katzman, 33, an insurance broker at Finmark Financial Group in Melville, said with a smile. "But I've done a lot of training."

About 1,000 spectators were on hand to watch the matches, in which a "tie" is always declared after the third and final round. The event, sponsored by the Fuoco Group of Hauppauge and Manhattan, was emceed by Long Island Business News publisher JohnKominicki, who has done the honors for most of the eight years of the fights.

While light taps were mostly the order of the day, some got into it more than others.

Morgan "The Mauler" Futch, a sales rep for Hauppauge-based Lacrosse Unlimited Co., duked it out against Michelle "Happy Hands" Smith, a residential coordinator at Old Bethpage-based Family Residences and Essential Enterprises Inc. The two women traded some sharp punches, then embraced after the match. Futch said the experience felt "awesome."