SHREVEPORT, La. -- The designation of a northwest Louisiana gym as a training center for Olympic hopefuls will allow boxers from at least nine states to train close to home and will fulfill the dream of a former pro fighter.
The Irish McNeel Sports for Boys gym was dedicated Wednesday by retired welterweight boxing champ Sugar Ray Leonard, who won a gold medal for boxing in the 1976 Olympics, as a regional training center for the USA Amateur Boxing Federation.
The 11-year-old gym is undergoing $125,000 in renovations that will allow it to house, feed and train 24 boxers and their coaches at one time. The fighters will train for two-week periods at the facility, which will open in January.
Boxers hoping to make the Olympic team previously had to travel to Colorado Springs, Colo., for training. But officials with the Amateur Boxing Federation recently certified the McNeel gym and a facility at Lake Placid, N.Y., as training centers.
Boxers from a 600-mile radius of Shreveport will be eligible to train at the McNeel gym, and some will be eligible to take part in international competition.
'The advantage will be that a boy will be able to be recognized,' said Sports for Boys spokesman George Dement. 'He can come here, where he couldn't go to Colorado Springs. More boys will have opportunities to be seen and train.
'I know some boxers that are as good as anybody in the country, but they can't afford to go to Colorado Springs.'
Selection of the gym as a training facility for boxers fulfills the lifelong dream of former pro fighter James 'Irish' McNeel, Dement said. After he retired, McNeel trained boxers in his back yard, later moving to a small facility near downtown Shreveport.
Several of his friends joined together to build Sports for Boys, which was completed a year before McNeel died.
'It's been Irish McNeel's dream all these years,' Dement said. 'He died in 1973 of cancer. And even though he knew he was going to die, he had this gym like he wanted it and he said it was the happiest year of his life. This is just an extension of what he wanted. He never dreamed it would be what it is today.'
