Good article..Schools cutting sports causing a rise in boxing gyms

**GrantZilla** Sat Feb 26, 2011 10:23 pm

Antonio, 14, is among the hundreds of Toledo youths who have discovered boxing this year after the public school system, facing a $39 million deficit, cut its athletics budget. It is a scenario that is being played out across the country, as high unemployment, falling home values and declining tax revenues continue to batter school finances.

Some children, and their parents, are checking out sports that until recently were unfamiliar, including boxing — and without inspiration from the Oscar-nominated movie “The Fighter,” which many here have not yet seen.

In Southern California, “boxing actually is growing here because pretty much all the districts in our area have cut back on sports,” said Connie Cervantes, director of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Police Athletic League, which in recent years has seen an eightfold increase in the size of its boxing program

The cuts to the athletic programs in Toledo were among the most severe in the nation. At the beginning of the school year, the district disbanded all sports teams for middle school students and high school freshmen. It also cut high school cross-country, wrestling, golf and boys’ tennis teams, along with all intramural activities, including cheerleading and dance teams.

Some parents said they did not have many alternatives when the sports teams were eliminated. They could send their children to boxing clubs and live with the inevitable bruised foreheads and bloodied lips. Or they could leave them alone after school in neighborhoods that are often troubled by gangs and crime.

After Toledo’s schools announced the cuts, the city’s older boxing gyms quickly filled to capacity. Three new gyms have opened in the last year, and they are now full, too. Until last year, about 40 people used to attend the fight nights featuring boxers from different gyms. The latest bouts attracted 400 fans

Interest in youth boxing is growing fast, said Terrel Harrison, director of the Police Athletic League in Oxnard. The city has nine boxing gyms, all of which are full. It could open another five, “and we still wouldn’t have enough space for all the kids,” he said. “Since they’re cutting back on these different school programs, young kids are turning to boxing because it’s an extremely inexpensive sport.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/us/27boxing.html