I met some great kids in 2003 when photographer T.J. Salsman and I documented the Springfield Housing Authority’s Cobras boxing team, an after-school boxing program for youths looking for something productive to do or a safe, suitable outlet for their aggression.

The resulting story appeared in the Feb. 28, 2003, issue of Heartland Magazine in The State Journal-Register.

Off the street fighters / The Springfield Cobras boxing team offers structure and discipline to young people at risk
Feb. 28, 2003

Nine-year-old Keith Treadwell knows what it takes to become a good boxer.

“Practice,” said the Butler Elementary student, who is a member of the Springfield Cobras youth boxing team. “I practice here. I practice at my house. Sometimes I’ll be in bed at night and I practice.”

Any secret moves up his sleeve?

“There’s no secret to boxing!” he said, incredulous that someone would ask such a silly question. “You just have to have good punches and upper cuts and hooks.”

And with that, the boy with the sweet face who prefers to sit alone quietly if he loses a match smacked his gloved fists together and headed for the boxing ring, where his sparring partner waited.

Treadwell is one of about 23 kids who box for the Cobras, a team sponsored by the Springfield Housing Authority. The youngest boxer is 6 and the oldest is 23.

With a shoestring budget, a few dedicated volunteers and a lot of spirit, the team is taking impressionable youths off the street and away from their video games and giving them something to do after school.

Cordale Johnson, a 10-year-old student at Owen Marsh Elementary School, rested on a metal chair after a few practice rounds in the ring.

He’s been boxing with the Cobras a few months and already has garnered a trophy and a medal, which he proudly displays on top of a console television in his bedroom at home.

He has aspirations of maybe becoming a boxing coach when he grows up. That or a gymnast, he said.

“It’s not like beating people up,” Cordale said of his sport of choice. “I just have fun doing it. We get to spar and do the bag. Then we run laps sometimes outside and jump rope. Sometimes, when we do good, Coach’ll take us to get something to eat.”

The Cobras are coached by John Luther Howell, a successful amateur boxer during the 1950s who has led the program since its inception, seeing it through numerous sponsors and hundreds of kids looking for an outlet for pent-up energy, a place to spend time after school or an opportunity to learn a new sport.

Howell’s work with the boxing team started in the mid 1970s when he took Mike Townsend’s Street Work with Adolescents class at Sangamon State University. The Rev. Ken McNeil of Grace United Methodist Church had started a boxing team in Springfield. When McNeil was transferred to Wisconsin, Howell took over the team as his class project.

Through the years, the Cobras have been sponsored by a variety of organizations, but the housing authority took over the team in 1980 and relies heavily on grants and donations from the community for financial support.

Cordale became interested in the team during the summer when he stopped in at Howell’s house one day.

“I saw all his trophies and asked him where he got them. He said from boxing,” Cordale recalled. He and several of his cousins decided to join the team.

“We signed up. Now that we’re on the team, we go over to his house sometimes and watch his boxing videos.”

Practices are on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at the housing authority’s maintenance facility on Truman Road. The boxing ring used to be at the National Guard Armory, but it had to be moved after security was tightened following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Howell drives a van to pick up most of the children, who mainly live on Springfield’s east side.

“Before these kids leave, I tell them to take the garbage out and help their mothers out,” Howell said. “I don’t just want to get them in the ring and get them beat up. They’ve got to learn some manners and some discipline, too.”

Warm-up exercises are the first order of business once the boxers arrive at the training facility. Pushups, arm exercises, running and jumping rope are standard fare. Even if the kids don’t get in the boxing ring, they have to exercise.

“They have to get into shape,” Howell said. “They’re being hit all the time, so they’ve got to have that. A lot of them can move one way or the other, keeping their balance and stuff together pretty good. But a lot of them don’t like to do those pushups.”

After warming up, the kids don their boxing gloves and other gear and head for the ring or to either of the two punching bags that hang nearby.

Occasionally, young boxers from Beardstown will come to Springfield to spar with the Cobras, and the Cobras sometimes go to Beardstown. There also is a youth boxing team in Decatur that has an outdoor ring the Cobras go to from time to time when the weather is nice.

***

For the most part, the kids who want to box for the Cobras are respectful of Howell and the other boxers.

“If they want to box, then I’ll deal with them. But if they want to be problem makers, I let them stay, but I break them down,” Howell said.

“I either put them in the ring with somebody or if they get to the point that they’re unruly, I talk to them. And if that doesn’t work, I put them out. I tell them to go home, because they won’t last long in the street anyway.”

“The street” is what many of the youngsters are trying to avoid and others are trying to confront. Most of them face the same kinds of street violence and distractions that youngsters faced 20 years ago. The boxing program allows them at least to learn to defend themselves properly if the need arises.

“It never did stop. They’re still coming in for the same reasons. On the streets, they still want to grab a pair of tennis shoes from a kid. They still just want to buffalo these kids,” Howell said. “But these kids get with the team here, and we break up a lot of that stuff. It’s been working.”

As Howell put it, “It keeps them out of jail and in school.”

The change in many of the youngsters is evident both at home and at school, he added. They start dressing up, they become more polite and are more conscientious of their studies.

Boxing also builds their self-confidence.

“A lot of kids have been labeled as being chickens and won’t fight. Then they get into boxing and find out they’re better than they thought they were. It makes a good fighter and a good student,” Howell said.

“All the parents kind of want the kids into something other than running the streets and getting expelled from school. A lot of them love boxing so much that even their teachers say they’re doing better.

“Boxing, to me, is just an umbrella. We don’t teach them to go out and tear up the streets or anything like that. To me, it’s education and discipline. The kids have to show that before they can be part of boxing, or the officials, they’ll put them out.”

***

Darius Greyer, 11 and a student at Harvard Park Elementary School, has been boxing with the Cobras since he was 8. He still remembers how he got involved.

“(Someone) asked if we would like to box. She said get permission from your mom, and my mom said OK. So they started picking me up at my house,” he said.

“I’m one of the best boxers here,” he added, noting that he received a $30 prize when he won a match at an out-of-town tournament in December. He spent the money, he said with a grin, but can’t remember on what.

Howell said Greyer, as well as others on the team, show a great deal of promise.

“There’s always one who comes around like Greyer who wants to really box and wants to be great,” Howell said. “I just don’t want to put too much pressure on them. He’s got a lot of confidence. He wants me to give him a nickname. I always give kids nicknames when they’re doing good.”

Ukayla Thomas, 11, is Keith Treadwell’s big sister. She joined the Cobras after two of her male friends encouraged her to. But there aren’t many other girls on the team, so most of the time she has no one with whom she can spar in the ring.

But because she enjoys being around the boxing ring, she finds other ways to occupy her time. She assists Howell with activities such as getting attendance lists together. She exercises with the group, passes out beverages and otherwise keeps an eye on things. Sometimes, she will do her homework.

“At first I wanted to box. Sometimes I do the punching bags, but mostly I go and help my coach,” she said.

Jermain Jefferson, at 6 years old, is the youngest boxer on the Cobras team. The others call him “Little Man,” a nickname given to him by his family. He and his brother, Cornelius Johnson, 9, joined the Cobras last summer. Jermain wants to be a boxer when he grows up, and he talks about boxing all the time.

“I like to box people, and I like to win,” he said.

Robert McDaniel, 14 and an eighth grader at Washington Middle School, has practiced with the team every week for the last five months.

“My dad started me liking boxing, and he looked around and found a place for me to box,” McDaniel said. He wants to play football in high school, and the exercise and training involved with boxing will help him toward that end.

“The physical exercise – that’s the part I really like. The workouts, the sparring, the fighting,” he said. “I’ve always liked boxing and football. They’re my favorite sports.”

During a practice session in December, McDaniel sparred in the ring with another Cobra boxer who proved to be a formidable opponent. McDaniel kept breaking into a grin during the bout.

During a short break, McDaniel stood in one of the ring’s corners and got advice from Cobra assistant coach Robert Meek – or “Coach Bob,” as the kids call him.

“When you get hit, your hands drop lower and lower and lower until you’re down here,” Meek advised, lowering his clenched fists to waist level. “You got to keep your hands up.

“And quit smiling so much!” he added and laughed.

McDaniel said it’s just not his nature to get angry during sparring matches, even if he’s losing.

“If they’re not hurting me, it kind of makes me laugh instead of getting mad,” he said.

“I usually only get mad when someone hits me in the nose. They say you’re not supposed to lose your temper because then you lose control.”

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In October, the Cobras received a $10,000 grant from the city of Springfield’s Office of Planning and Economic Development. The grant is allowing the group to buy needed equipment and travel to matches and tournaments in cities such as St. Louis, Galesburg and LaSalle.

Sometimes the team has to stay overnight for tournaments. In December the team had to reserve four motel rooms to accommodate all the boxers during a tournament in LaSalle.

“I can’t go too far with the kids because there’s just not enough money to go around,” Howell said.

The team owns eight pairs of boxing gloves that are shared among the youngsters. It has a few pieces of headgear. Mouthpieces are on order, as are team T-shirts, thanks to the grant funding.

Weight-lifting equipment would be a welcome addition to the team’s training facility, but there’s no money for such an extravagance.

SHA authorities say they are trying to incorporate the boxing program as a nonprofit organization, which would allow for tax-deductible donations.

Several of the Cobras’ boxers have gone on to win Golden Gloves championships, as well as other competitions. Occasionally, a former boxer will stop in and visit with Howell and the others.

In fact, one of Howell’s former boxers, who now is a student at Notre Dame University, visited him during Christmas break and worked out with the other boxers.

“That really means something when they come back and see you,” he said. “A lot of kids write and tell me how they’ve been away for a while and how boxing really helped them.

“Me and the kids have good times,” he added. “There are a lot of social times; it’s not just boxing. It’s keeping me young. I’ve got many miles to go before I rest.”