Boxing at Summer Camp

After suffering a minor bite wound in a recent encounter with a sea creature while diving off the California coast, I started to reread the 1974 best seller, Jaws, written by Peter Benchley. The book, and the one good movie out of four that it spawned, popularized the image of the great white shark as evil incarnate, a creature that took hellish pleasure in terrifying the unsuspecting. I still have the scars from when my girlfriend of the time, Jackie, dug her nails into my forearm when the shark made its initial appearance well into the movie. The subsequent demonization of that species and our relentless pursuit of their destruction have brought these creatures to the brink of extinction. Years after writing the book, Benchley said he regrets being a party to this result and would probably not write the book knowing what he knows about the critters today.

All very interesting, you say, but what has this got to do with recreational boxing or have we somehow linked to the Wild Outdoors website? Early in the book, just as the shark discovers the smorgasbord offered by the beach goers of the fictional town of Amity, Benchley offered this portrayal of the young people on the sandy beach. "Privilege," he observed, "had been bred into them with genetic certainty. As their eyes were brown or blue, so their tastes and consciences were determined by other generations....Their bodies were lean, their muscles toned by boxing lessons at age nine, riding lessons at twelve, and tennis lessons ever since."

This observation really struck me. Boxing lessons for the children of affluence? Isn’t that regression in the Social Darwinism that Benchley alludes to in this passage and of which he is a product? To listen to the pundits, boxing is a low brow sport, the ticket for some of the masses of the unwashed to escape the tenements. Can things have changed that much in the quarter century since Benchley wrote this description? How would offspring of the wealth be exposed to such an activity? One explanation may lie in the participation by members of this social class in summer camp, an institution that marked the childhood of many post-war youngsters.

Growing up, my more well-to-do friends would disappear for a couple of weeks every summer, wisked away by car or bus to a residential camp with an Indian sounding name that was inevitably was sited on the seashore, an island, or a heavily wooded lake. Not a bad escape if your parents could afford it, like Scouts without the uniforms and weekly meetings. At the camp, the child was exposed to a cornucopia of experiences--arts and crafts, woodcraft, band, drama, and of course sports like swimming, volleyball, marksmanship, tennis, water skiing, sailing, and of course, boxing. High school and college students found summer employment as camp counselors, either in charge of activities or in charge of the campers assigned to a cabin. For the most part, these counselors were products of summer camps in their childhood.

At some camps, the boxing was highly organized with professional trainers. In many cases, it was offered because the counselors were physical education majors or had some formal training in the activity. I recall receiving an application to be a counselor at an aquatic camp in the Florida Keys that asked me to check off all the activities I could teach or supervise, including boxing. Still, the training that the boys received was rudimentary. (Most camps, but not all, seemed to have been segregated by gender.)

Facilities were ad hoc, often amounting to a little more than a couple of seasonally worn heavy bags and speed bags. A three rope ring cordoning off a grass or dirt area for bouts would be a luxury. For many, it provided the only exposure to boxing as part of an overall sport activities program. This image from the catalog of a camp of 1950s, shows that the training was not what we would consider adequate for competition in amateur boxing, but as a recreational activity, it worked quite well.

If my bouts with friends who attended camp is any indication, the boys learned something. In a recreational boxing match among kids, a slightly skilled boxer has an advantage over an untrained boxer. Of course, I had received my training from one of the fathers in the neighborhood and got advanced training at the YMCA, as shown at the left, which is where many of Benchley’s contemporaries would have received their advanced training.

I recall one bout among my flying buddies that I refereed. Keith O’Leary and Mark Hansen seemed destined to compete at everything. Keith was by far the more confident of the two, something that always seemed irk Mark to no end. Now, Mark was a fair recreational boxer as kids go. I had no idea of the extent of Keith’s skills since he had never really showed an inclination to box. The first bell, a stick hit on a metal trash can, rang and Keith dominated from that point on. As the one minute round progressed, with time kept on my Timex, Keith peppered Mark with combinations. He threw Mark’s timing off by shifting back and forth, a maneuver that would ever after be known as the O’Leary shuffle. He was quick and agile, qualities that are highly desirable in boxers and pilots. I stopped the bout once. In the third round, Keith hit Mark with a sweeping right hook to the head. The kid never saw it coming, perhaps since it took the round about way of getting to him. But when it hit, Keith shifted his weight to drive it home. Rather than roll with the punch, Mark refused to budge. The result was a shower of perspiration from his head as his cheek took the full force of the blow, like a wet post hit by a stick. I stopped the contest to see if Mark was OK. He wanted to continue, but for the few remaining seconds of the fight, both kids just went through the motions. That aspect is one thing that separates recreational from amateur boxing. Once the clearly dominant boxer lands a solid blow, neither side really has the desire to continue, despite their ability to do so. As a result, there are no hard feelings when things are over.

After the gloves were off, I asked Keith where he learned to box. He related that as a kid he went to summer camp. Boxing was what the boys did when there was nothing else to do, kind of an the athletics of last resort. As a result, he learned the bare essentials at camp, but never really learned to enjoy the sport. As for the shuffle, he said it was the adaptation of a volleyball drill he had learned his freshman year when he want out for the team at school.