The sign at the entrance to the building said there were no children under the age of thirteen allowed. I was only nine years old and in the third grade. It wasn’t looking good.
“Papi, let’s leave,” I said, feeling a little discouraged.
“Come on, Jess, we’re already here.”
Inside, it was crazy. The place was full of boxers—all boys, some older, some close to my age. I had been training for two years, but I still felt unsure about the place, even though it was bright and clean, and the people were friendly. I couldn’t believe it! This was a building we’d driven by hundreds of times. Who knew so many cool things were happening inside? Never judge a book by its cover! I knew right away I was going to like it there.
Bergen County Police Athletic League (PAL)
Then we met Don Somerville, the boxing director, a super-tall, lean African American man with a gentle, soothing voice and easygoing demeanor. You’d never suspect that he’d been a fierce amateur boxing champion in his day.
Don came over to us and said curiously, “Can I help you?”
“My daughter wants to fight in the Junior Olympics, and we need a trainer who can get her there,” my father said.
“Oh, I see,” Don said, studying me carefully. “What’s your name?” he asked me, bending down a little so I wouldn’t have to strain so much to look him in the eye.
“Jesselyn,” I said, sounding unusually shy.
“How many fights have you won, Jesselyn?” he continued.
“None,” I said with no shyness at all.
“Okay. Well, how many fights have you lost?”
“None,” I said in an even stronger tone.
“We can’t find a girl her age to fight,” Papi said, “and she’s been training hard for two years now at different gyms. We need the right trainer and the right gym.”
Don nodded. It was clear he understood. “I think I might be able to help.”
Papi and Don liked each other right away because they were both huge football fans. I liked Don because he was a funny guy and laughed easily.
PAL was different from the other gyms because it drew in kids from the area who were having trouble in their lives. Don ran the gym’s Suspension Alternative Program (SAP) so he knew how to work with younger boxers. SAP intervenes with kids who are struggling in school and at home. The boxing gym gave them an outlet. My dad thought that was pretty cool. Some of these kids, all boys, would be my future teammates, and in no time they would be like a second family.
“We have a team that might be just right for you,” Don said.
Team? I had boxed with other kids, but I’d never been or felt like part of a team.
“I thought boxers boxed alone,” I said.
What a lot of people don’t realize about boxing is that at every level, even in professional boxing, fighters train as a team with the same trainer at the same gym. They become stablemates, sparring partners, travel companions, motivators, and friends. Coaches don’t look to train just one great boxer; they look to build a strong team of fighters. Each team carries the reputation of the gym and its coaching staff with them to matches and tournaments. Gyms with a lot of winning fighters on their team attract better fighters to the gym. And sparring better fighters would help me get prepared for the Junior Olympics.
In order to qualify for Junior Olympics, I first had to be a registered boxer and have five registered bouts under my belt. I would be placed in the Pee Wee 9-10 division first, because of my age and weight, and advance in divisions as I got older. My path became clear. I would need to focus and push myself. It wouldn’t happen overnight. It might take a few years, but I was determined to get there.
Right away Don got me going on a regular routine: heavy bag, legwork (it was all about legwork), shadowboxing, jumping rope, running, push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups, sparring.
I trained even harder than ever under Don. He would say anyone could be a boxer, no matter how young, no matter what sex. You just needed discipline, dedication, and most of all a desire to be great. I loved that . . . a desire to be great. I thought about that a lot. I felt like it was the most motivating thing he could have said to me. I didn’t want to be a beginner boxer, or just a good boxer. I didn’t want to box as a hobby or as an after-school activity. I wanted to be great! I wanted to be a legend like all those who had come before me.
People were beginning to notice my improvement. Inside the gym, boys started to respect “the girl.” I think they looked forward to sparring with me, too. I became a solid competitor. Outside the gym, people started to notice something different about me as well, especially my best friend, Mackenzie. We had been best friends since kindergarten and were still best friends in the third grade. I guess I had been spending less time playing with my friends and more time training, but I hadn’t really thought about it until she confronted me.
“Why can’t you play anymore after school?” she asked me during class.
“Because I need to box.”
“Every day?”
“Yeah, I need to train.”
“What are you training for?”
“The Junior Olympics! And one day, I’m going to be the greatest female boxer in the history of boxing!”
She laughed at me. So one afternoon I brought her to the gym to show her what I did.
An hour into training she said, “It’s okay, but it’s not my thing.” And that was the first and last time she came with me to the gym.
By the third grade, kids at school started to call me “the girl boxer.” Even kids I barely knew called me that. It seemed a little awkward at first, but it was true. I was a girl, and all I wanted to do was box.
I grew envious. How could I let my friends and family call me the girl boxer when all I ever did was watch the boys in my gym box in sanctioned matches? I had to fight in at least five sanctioned matches to even qualify for the Junior Olympics, so I was starting to get antsy. And it wasn’t like there was a directory of girl fighters we could rely on. We would have to wait and see if there was a girl at my level to fight. So I waited and I trained.
“Don,” I would say to him after a workout, “when can I fight?”
“You are fighting,” he would always respond.
“No, I mean fight fight.”
According to the rules set up by USA Boxing, sanctioned fights between boys and girls are not allowed. Boys have to fight boys. Girls have to fight girls. So I couldn’t officially fight boys, just spar with them. But I was okay with that. Because at least there were girls out there fighting now. I was just impatient for some real action.
In my free time, I read a lot about boxing. A lot had changed in the world of women’s boxing. In 1876, in one of the first “boxing matches” in American history, two women named Nell Saunders and Rose Harland fought each other for two hundred dollars and a silver butter dish. Saunders ended up with the purse and the butter dish, and Harland received ten dollars. In the early days of boxing, it was hard for a woman to get a boxing license, making the history of female boxing hard to trace. In 1957, famed boxer Barbara Buttrick and her opponent Phyllis Kugler received the state of Texas’s first boxing licenses for women. They went on to fight each other in a world title; Buttrick won unanimously, making her the first women’s world boxing champion that same year. It wasn’t until 1988 that any national boxing association gave women official approval to box when Sweden became the first country to lift a ban on women’s amateur boxing. In 1993 the American Civil Liberties Union sued USA Boxing to allow women to compete in matches. The London Olympics in 2012 was the first time that women ever boxed in the games, so our history of famous female boxers is pretty short . . . but I wanted to be on that list with Laila Ali, Cecilia Braekhus, Lucia Rijker, Mia St. John, Holly Holm, Ann Wolfe, Claressa Shields, and all the rest. Many of these women might be unknown to most people, but they’re idols and legend
s to me and to other female boxers working hard to get where they’ve gone.
I began to ask Don more and more when I could fight a girl. Then I began to beg. He would just continue the workout. “Learn how to lean in and get under.”
I was getting frustrated. It was like practicing for a game or dance recital or musical concert that would never come.
I said to Don one day after a really tough training session, “Am I ready to fight now?”
Don said, “You gotta be ready all year round.”
“So am I ready?”
“No, not yet.”
“But how can I learn if I never get a match in the ring?”
I kept asking him, and finally he confessed. “Jess,” he said, “I’m having trouble finding someone for you to fight. There just aren’t any girls out there your age.” But he promised me he wouldn’t give up looking for the right opponent.
The right opponent would be my height and weight and match my level of experience, and there were very few girls in that category.
I started with Don in August 2015, but it wasn’t until that November that he found a girl for me to fight. Three months might not seem like a very long time, but I had been training for a couple of years already and was more than ready to prove myself in the ring. One afternoon I came to the gym and Don had a huge smile on his face.
“I got a girl for you to fight.”
“Really?!” I was ecstatic.
“Yep. She’s just like you: same weight, same height, same level.”
“How many fights?” I asked nervously.
“None. This will be her first one. She hasn’t been able to find anybody to fight either. She’s just like you.”
Perfect!
“She’s not just like me,” I said with a wry smile. “No one’s like me.”
Don chuckled gently and said, “That’s right, Jess: no one’s like you.”
A few days earlier, Don had gotten a call from the father of this girl named Carrie—he was also her coach, and she was looking for someone to spar with. Don suggested setting up an actual sanctioned fight for us. Although Carrie’s dad was a little hesitant, they came by the gym a few days later. We met, hung out, and did kid stuff together, and it was settled. We were both eager to fight each other. The match would take place in a boxing ring during a Fight Night event at a high school in Carrie’s hometown.
After Carrie and her dad left, Don turned to me and said, “So, do you feel good about this?”
“Yes! I’m ready!”
“You’re not quite ready . . .”
Yes I was—more than ready.
“Naw. Something’s missing.”
What could possibly be missing? I thought.
“Every boxer needs a nickname.”
I hadn’t even thought about it. But he was right. Say the name Ray Robinson and people ask, “Who’s that?” but say Sugar Ray, and everyone knows who you’re talking about. All the legends had nicknames: Muhammad “the Greatest” Ali, Oscar “the Golden Boy” de la Hoya, Evander “the Real Deal” Holyfield, Joe “the Brown Bomber” Louis. Even the kids at my gym and kids they were boxing had nicknames. I needed to come up with a nickname quickly. So the boys in the gym started to brainstorm.
Every boxer needs a nickname.
At that time, Don’s wife, Maria, was always at the gym. She was very kind and supportive of me and at times acted like a mother figure. She would often say, “Oh Jess, you are too cute!” Everything was “too cute.” My movements were too cute, my gloves were too cute, my nail polish was too cute, my breathing sounds when I boxed were too cute. So when Don asked me what my nickname should be, all the boys in the gym said, “How about Jess ‘Too Cute’ Silva?” When Maria found out about my nickname, she of course said, “Oh, that is just too cute!”
The nickname stuck.
A few days later, Papi, Jesiah, and I were watching Rocky IV on TV. It was rated PG, so Papi made us close our eyes and cover our ears during the adult parts. There’s this one scene in the movie where Apollo Creed comes out in this amazing boxing outfit dancing to “Living in America” sung by James Brown. Sylvester Stallone, playing Rocky Balboa, looks stunned, and the crowd is going wild; it’s hands down the most incredible boxing entrance ever. I’ve actually watched every Rocky movie backward and forward. My father said they were the all-time best classic boxing movies.
But as I thought about Creed’s entrance, I turned to my father and said, “Papi, I can’t fight Carrie.”
“Why not?” My father looked concerned.
“I don’t have an outfit like those guys,” I said, pointing to the TV.
Within a week, Papi and I were driving out to Double-A Boxing in Brooklyn to meet with a tailor. Double-A supplied all the boxers I knew with their outfits. Even the actors in the movie Creed—a spinoff of the Rocky films—got fitted there.
“Pink!” the guy at Double-A said to me. “I see you comin’ off those ropes in bright pink!” he said again in a thick New York accent.
“Pink?!” I said to him. No way! I hated pink.
I decided on something tougher: black, gold, and purple.
I got to help them design it. I even got to pick out the fabric: satin, of course. Within a few weeks, my outfit arrived. It was crazy how legit I felt wearing it. On the back was my full name in gold cursive lettering with a gold crown above it. The front was purple and black with a thick gold stripe in the middle. But the best part: an all-gold hood. That was for real!
I got so wrapped up in the moment that I didn’t think to ask how Papi was going to pay for such a fancy outfit. Normally they cost at least six hundred dollars. He said it was nothing to worry about, that he’d gotten a good deal on it.
Later I found out he’d sold his Xbox to cover the expenses.
“I’m a grown man. What do I need an Xbox for anymore,” Papi said with a wink and a smile. But I knew that secretly he probably missed it.
I had my first official sanctioned fight on November 6, 2015. I was nine years old. The fight took place in the gymnasium of Bloomfield High School in New Jersey. A bunch of other kids were boxing that night, but Carrie and I were the youngest, and were two of the only—if not the only—girls boxing. The place was done right! In the center of this big gym was a really nice black, red, and white ring. Bleachers were set up, and refs were checking the fighters in and managing last-minute changes and equipment issues. They were even selling tickets at the door. It was crazy-cool. Twenty-five dollars a head and all proceeds went to local police officers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which I thought was pretty nice.
Papi and I arrived at 5:00 p.m. for weigh-in. My fight wasn’t until 7:00 p.m. I definitely had butterflies.
Weigh-in is a super-important part of the sport not only because it determines which division a boxer fights in, but because it makes sure it’s an even fight, which results in fewer injuries. The fight was set for the 75-pound Pee Wee 9-10 division, but the day before the match, Don called me into the gym. He told me to put on heavy sweatpants and a heavy sweatshirt and then to get on the treadmill and start running. He made me run on the treadmill for five minutes, then jump on the scale, then run on the treadmill for another five minutes, then jump on the scale. He made me do that for half an hour. Afterward Don told me the girl I was fighting was coming in somewhere between 68 and 70 pounds and we needed to be close to equal in weight. She would need to gain a few pounds, but I had to drop two to three pounds in less than a day.
It turned out that at weigh-in, Carrie came in underweight, so her mom made her eat cupcakes and drink a ton of water. She put boots on and weighed herself again. She weighed in at just under 73 pounds, so the fight was on! Luckily for her, we’d have to wait a couple of hours before our match, so her belly wouldn’t feel full by the time we fought.
After weigh-in, I noticed that the seats in t
he gym were filling up and the crowd was getting rowdy. The light butterflies that had been fluttering in my stomach before weigh-in felt like they were riding a roller coaster now. I was really nervous!
After boxers weigh in, each one sees a doctor for a physical. Doctors check blood pressure, hands, knuckles, eyes, and ears, and listen to your heart . . . that sort of thing.
I went into the girls’ locker room to relax and get ready. It smelled like fresh paint. The rows of lockers had just been painted a bright cherry red, and they were shiny and new looking. For some reason the fresh paint smell and pretty color of the lockers made me smile. I looked down at my sparkly outfit, and maybe a little bit of me felt the same way—shiny, new, and strong. I twisted my hair into a tight bun and did some stretching. I was all alone, thinking about the things I had been working on in training and everything I had to remember when I got in the ring. Every boxer fears their opponents will be faster and more powerful. Part of being a good boxer is learning how to remain calm and collected before and during a fight.
Don and Papi came in to wrap my hands and give me a pep talk.
“Are you doing okay?” Don asked.
I was doing okay.
“Are you doing okay?” he said to my anxious father.
We all started to laugh.
Then to me, Don said, “You’ve been training hard for this. You’re ready. I wouldn’t send you out there if you weren’t. So I want you to focus on one thing tonight. Just one thing: having fun!”
The gymnasium where we were fighting was on my opponent’s turf. Carrie was “home,” and I was the “away” player. That meant that most of the support would be for her. So I was completely shocked when I came out of the locker room and saw so many familiar faces in the stands. Paulie, my old coach, was there. A few kids from the gym were there, and several family members: both grandmothers, my uncle, my little brother, and another uncle. Knowing that I had my own small cheering section made me feel more confident. I wanted to prove myself more than ever.
My Corner of the Ring Page 4
