10.18.04 – By Coach Tim Walker – tpwalker@hotmail.com – Have you ever asked why you just can’t tryout for the Dallas Cowboys or the New York Nicks or the Atlanta Braves or the Tampa Bay Lightening? Honestly, do you think there is a great possibility that any professional sport is going to waste it’s time sitting through meaningless tryouts? Survey says “No!”
There are levels of athletics and each level is designed to weed through the bunch in search of the best. From Pop Warner football to city league to junior varsity to varsity to college to the pros. Each level has a proven method of eliminating those less athletically or physically gifted.
As a young man I grew up in an area where football was king. Virtually every boy in the town played football on one level or another so as football season rolled around I enthusiastically showed up for tryouts. The coach asked everyone to line up by the position they wanted to play. Having been a standout line backer I assumed my position in line and quickly noticed something wrong. Though I am 6’1” tall now I was about seven or eight inches shorter than the next shortest guy and about 40 pounds lighter back then. I definitely did not have the classic high school football player physique. It didn’t take long before I realized that my football dreams were dead.
I said all that to say this, “In order for us to get pro boxing on the right track we are going to have to make an effort to get amateur boxing on track.” The number of amateur bouts and participants are way down. Until a couple of years ago you could use the loose change in your pocket to pay the sanctioning fees for an amateur bout. The current sanctioning fee is $250 per show!!! That pushes it way beyond the limits of what most boxing clubs can afford.
Amateur boxing has a close nit following that usually consists of moms, dads and siblings. When you couple low attendance with limited budgets then you can see that it is difficult for a gym to generate enough funds to cover all its costs especially when one of the costs is a bloated sanctioning fee. Little league baseball would be adversely affected if every team had to divvy up that kind of money for each game. The same could probably be said for peewee football and AAU basketball. Professional boxing gyms are straying away from amateur shows because of the costs and risks.
USA Boxing is holding its annual meeting in Charlotte, NC. It might help if some of us drop a line to the following people questioning the bloated sanctioning fees:
Executive Director, Eric Parthen: eparthen@usaboxing.org
Executive Assistant, Andy Stampley: astampley@usaboxing.org
Julie Goldsticker: jgoldsticker@usaboxing.org
Thanks for your support.