Coach Harold Wilen and the Sarasota Boxing Club have been helping troubled kids for decades. But now they’re struggling to stay in the gym they both call home.
September 4th, 2009 by Robert Johnson in News, Sarasota-Manatee
The overhead door to the Sarasota Boxing Club is wide open on a bright August afternoon.
I glance around the metal building, looking for fans. There are none. I look for A/C — nothing. It’s crowded. I weave my way through boxers, girlfriends, kids, trainers. I look around again for a fan, some kind of relief. I can’t feel anything but the hot, still, athletic-smelling, damp air.
A half-dozen boxers, hands taped, work the bags. The sharp staccato of the speed bags punctuated by the whump-whump whump-whump-whump of the heavy bag hits. The two boxing rings are occupied. The canvas on both looks moist, mildewed. I wipe sweat from my eyes.
A buzzer screams over my shoulder. I jump. The two heavyweights in the west ring split. Coach Harold Wilen (pictured at right) works one guy over for a minute, verbally and physically salving and invigorating, then runs to the other corner. “Some guys you slap; some guys you kiss,” Wilen, 64, tells me later.
He doesn’t have far to bend down to the fighters on the stools; the guy can’t be much over five feet. He’s all wiry, muscled energy — hair just going grey, moustache and thick glasses.
The buzzer sounds again and the two fighters rise. They walk to meet and start pounding away on each other, the heavily connecting swings adding a smack-thud contribution to the din.
The first rule of Sarasota Boxing Club is: Keep your hands up. The second rule of Sarasota Boxing Club is: Keep your chin down. The third rule of Sarasota Boxing Club is: Try to keep your ass off the canvas.
Each fighter is trying to live all three. Both are monstrous, with up to 1,000 pounds per square inch of punching power. One black, one Latino and covered in tattoos, their arms slice the air, stirring up a breeze I only imagine I can feel.
“This is not golf,” Coach says. No kidding.
BUT THIS IS home for Coach Harold Wilen. Not the place where he keeps his bed or the place he shares with a wife he no longer knows. This is the place he brings all the love and respect he has for his two life passions: boxing and helping kids.
This is where he lives. Even while he’s at work, staring down the last 1,000 days of a 30-year career as a school social worker in Sarasota County, he’s here. “I’m like Clark Kent,” he says, “looking around like mad when I get a call on my cell in my cubicle, for a closet or someplace to take the call.”
But the club wasn’t always here. The boxing club started in 1985 at the old icehouse on Central Avenue, as the New Sarasota Boxing Club & Learning Center, providing remedial education, boxing lessons and homework help. “The kids would come in and box,” Wilen says. “Then they’d sit down with a tutor to learn. But an asthma attack killed the program director in 1989 and that was the end of that.”
Now the club sits in this space off Fruitville, next to Bob’s Train Restaurant in an unused corner lot next to nothing at all. While there may be no formal education going on now, the boxing club’s idea continues to be that self-discipline is the foundation for achievement. Discipline that a kid can viscerally understand, that grabs him by his freshly dropped balls so he won’t get lost and mentally won’t let go, even when every other horrible distraction imaginable is vying for his attention.
For a man on the lookout for lost souls, Wilen never even had the chance to wander off. “I’m the classic momma’s boy,” he says. “My mom walked me to and from school in the Bronx until I was 12 years old. 12.” He smiles and shakes his head.
“I started boxing when I was old, 20, as a declaration of independence, to assert my manhood. I was a good boy, got good grades and minded my mom. But oh, how I loved to fight. I was shy, but in the ring I blossomed.” He smiles widely, showing off a missing molar.
Wilen fought in the ring for five years. Until eyesight limitations gave his coach cause for concern. “My coach thought I was missing punches. I didn’t see it like that,” he says, not blind to the pun.
It was 1967. “I was opposed to the Vietnamese War and there was a big shortage of male teachers in New York City at the time. They were given draft exemptions. I became a teacher,” he says.
And when his first wife moved to Florida with his children, he followed. When he started talking to a co-worker about opening a gym for inner-city kids, the co-worker referred him to Pat Ferlise and his abandoned icehouse on Central. Ferlise provided the club a rent-free home for 14 and a-half years. “Old man Ferlise was a great guy,” Coach Harold says, “he saw what I was trying to do and he did what he could to help.”
The program proved popular, but the city didn’t share the excitement of the local residents. Once they saw what Wilen was doing, in the suddenly occupied building, they threw an ordinance violation on him because the weeds in the lot were too high.
Coach laughs: “We had to ask the crack dealers to cross the street while we broke out the weed eater. I understood the city’s priorities pretty clearly at that moment.”
STILL, THE KIDS keep coming.
“Kids headed to prison,” Wilen tells me, “someone in their life would step in and say you need to do something, and often that something would involve boxing. When they got to me, they found love and respect.” He points to his T-shirt. “The Sarasota Boxing Club,” it reads, above a pair of dangling boxing gloves. Beneath that, two words: “Love & Respect.”
He leans forward, eyes bright. “I can’t explain it… the carryover effect to the rest of the kids’ lives is amazing. When a kid follows up a life filled with a series of miserable failures with success — so absent before…” he trails off, holding out his palms. “They trip on it. I trip on it.”
And the line of kids that has come is long and growing.
Kids like Johnny “Ghetto-Blaster” Williams, who fought, with Wilen in his corner, for the Middleweight Championship of the World in 1997 at the MGM Grand in Vegas; the follow-up match to the famous Tyson/Holyfield ear-bite fight. It was a fight Williams might have won if not for having to starve, exercise and dehydrate himself to make final weight while in Vegas.
Or like Cornell “Pickle” Harris Jr. Coach seems to sink back into himself as he remembers the boy. “He was 10 when he started coming to me; couldn’t even reach the speed bag on that wooden platform I have,” he says.
Another “behavior kid,” Pickle fought under Wilen for 11 years, working his way up to number five in the United States. Lightweight Champion of the World Nate Campbell was in the process of setting up a fight for him on July 25, 2009, but he never got the chance. Pickle was shot and killed at his girlfriend’s apartment in Sarasota on March 7. The boxing club and its friends all chipped in to pay for the funeral and expenses.
China Smith, perhaps Sarasota’s best-known boxer, came up through the club, too. “A beautiful kid,” Wilen says, “His fights were taken out of my hands. He got some money behind him and his fights, as it turned out weren’t as well matched as they could have been. He fought some gimme fights. No fault of China’s, but he ended up fighting some real bums.”
This gave Sarasota boxing as a whole, a black eye, a blemish many of the clubs friends are working to overcome.
Friends like Vice Mayor Kelly Kirshner, who says: “I grew up in Sarasota aware of the asset Sarasota Boxing Club is to this community; how it speaks to the needs, especially in Newtown, of getting kids off the streets.”
Friends like Tommy Pettiti, a local entrepreneur, who has partnered up with Jose “Hands of Steel” Duran (also a Wilen-made pugilist) to form Harley Steel Productions. The promotion group is dedicated to giving Sarasota boxing some warranted visibility and helping out wherever it can along the way.
Friends like Pettiti’s mom, one of the tutors when the club was on Central and who made enough of an impact on Johnny Williams that he thanked her on HBO in ’97.
Then there are kids, little kids under 8 who are too young to box, but come with their parents, so many kids that Coach jokes about starting up a daycare.
There is no racial tension, no professional/amateur tension. It’s a family environment down here. Fathers train with sons, wives watch their husbands, and moms watch their kids.
“And that’s the most important factor in all youth-intervention programs,” Mary Mack, of Newtown’s Front Porch Project, says. “It’s the parental involvement; the support and contribution of the parents is absolutely crucial for kids’ success. Without that no program is going to succeed.”
And successful programs like these, which survive on the vagaries of chance and kindness, are not common enough: 94 kids from Sarasota and Manatee counties were charged with crimes and tried as adults in 2007 and 2008. One kid swallowed by the system every four days.
Sarasota also has five kids sentenced to life in prison, two of them convicted of crimes that were not murder. The two most recent offenders were 14 and 15 at the times of their violations. And these crimes are now easier to punish than ever before, as the state imposes its RICO Act (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) laws to crack down on youth gangs.
Andrew Mikos, a local defense attorney and a former Manatee County prosecutor, says: “The RICO statute, in Florida, is dangerous. Using the prior convictions of its targets, all the state has to prove is association with a criminal gang, and that can be as innocuous as having friends in a gang. The possibility of this law being misapplied is too great to ignore.”
So, now, if a kid hangs with the wrong crowd, that kid could be arrested and tried for the entire gang’s offenses. And in certain neighborhoods, there will always be gangs trying to draw new members.
So, it’s surprising when Wilen says, “Even today, not many people in the city government care about the kids down here. I’ve had doors slammed in my face, literally gotten laughed at by city officials.”
Coach’s eyes narrow and he leans forward putting his arms on the table: “I’ve gotten nothing from the city — nothing. I’ve gotten on my knees, for at least verbal support. Commissioner Kirshner comes around, but aside from that we get nothing.”
And the boxing club needs help now more than ever before.
ON AUG. 24 Wilen came down to open the club and found a notice posted on the door bearing the signatures of the club’s landlord, Sarasota debt collection magnate Harvey Vengroff, and Wilen’s assistant of 17 years, Alan Sleit, stating the club now has a new name: The Sarasota Fight Club. It also listed Sleit as the person to contact if anyone wants to join.
“The Sarasota Boxing Club has been dying for a while now,” Sleit says in a phone interview. “Mr. Wilen doesn’t want change. He wants the same old boxing club, the same old club. I want to bring some excitement to town and contribute to the economy.”
The “excitement” Sleit and Vengroff want to bring is Mixed Martial Arts, the fighting style employed by fighters in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Where boxing is a relatively recent art, Ultimate Fighting embraces fight styles that have been around for millennia, such as Jiu-Jitsu, Judo and Greco-Roman wrestling.
When asked about the notice he found on the door, which was later given to Creative Loafing, Wilen responds: “Both myself and the board members of The Sarasota Boxing Club are more than amenable to sharing the space with an MMA training facility. But we need to keep the wall dividing the two spaces up and when Ultimate Fighters want to come over and improve their handwork, they open the door and we’ll help them with their handwork. To combine these two entities would be,” a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, “confusing.”
Sleit and Vengroff, though, want to demolish the dividing wall in the club and have Sleit personally oversee the entire community of fighters.
“My goal is different,” Vengroff says. “They’re trying to keep kids off the street, but I think we have to go farther than that. Provide some follow through. … In the 20 years [Wilen] has been here we haven’t done anything.” Vengroff is willing to invest to make the MMA club a success. “The operation wouldn’t need more than $50,000 to $100,000. … I want to let kids know there’s a rainbow out there.”
“It is not,” Wilen says, “a viable concept to make The Sarasota Boxing Club a new entity. And even if it were, Alan Sleit is not a viable head of that endeavor. The people with money, like Harvey, support this idea. What I don’t understand is why they refuse to support the incredible amount of talent that comes through this boxing club already.”
Regardless of why, the faithful of The Sarasota Boxing Club have a new kind of fight on their hands, and given no choice, they will again look for a new home. Which, according to boxing club minutes from a July 29 meeting could be any day. The report says the clubs has “1 month or maybe a little longer” “if SBC does not want to be part of the SFC” to get out.
The boxing club may not have much time and they don’t have all the answers. For every success story, there is one of a kid who strayed, who got seduced by the life, is in jail or wound up dead. There’s no easy answer — the kids have to want to come.
Fortunately, there are people involved with the club who love it: board members and dedicated volunteers. Dues are expected, but Wilen doesn’t do all he could to chase down money, to tell kids he can’t help them because they have no cash.
But still, there are fights to sponsor and equipment to maintain. Government funding may be available: “The Sarasota Boxing Club qualifies as a Dropout Prevention Center, a National Anti-Gang Center and could also be eligible for anti-juvenile delinquency center status,” Coach says. “And ultimately we might benefit most from someone skilled in grant writing, to lend a hand, as well as subscribers to our quarterly newsletter the Punchline.”
But for right now, at least, they need only one thing: to survive.
“Coach Harold is a father figure down here, and without question the best boxing coach I’ve ever met in my life,” Pettiti says, “No matter what happens, where The Sarasota Boxing Club is — is where he is.”
Sarasota Boxing Club, 2211 Fruitville Road, Sarasota, 586-2956.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:46 pm
Wonderfully written article; touching, informative, creative, intriguing.
THE best story I’ve read in CL lately.
Good luck to the Boxing Club – I hope people understand how important its program is to the community.
September 8th, 2009 at 11:57 pm
This is an inspiring story about a group in Sarasota that I wasn’t familiar with. I look forward to hearing more about this group. I hope they can find a way to keep their program going while remaining true to their mission ideals. good luck, Coach!
September 9th, 2009 at 11:31 am
Is this how the rich get richer? Wave false dreams and hopes not caring about the ramifications involved later in real life? Vengroff should follow Kirshner’s advice and continue to be a “friend” and not look for the dollar signs, as Sarasota as a whole has lost enough “history” already!
Who is this Sleit? Vengroff’s right-hand man? I know he cleans the toilets, fills them up, and from my understanding he is a glorified “handy-man”, not a boxing or MMA coach. It is surprising to see someone like a Vengroff partnering in a life-changing business for profit with a guy who has simply cleaned the toilets for Mr. Wilen for 17 years. I would say this was funny but considering the loss the community is going to feel once Vengroff and his partner (Sleit) get done ripping apart this non for profit organization that has obviously helped the Sarasota community for over 20 years, it is not!
How much money does Vengroff need to make off a non for profit organization which helps men, women, and children in our community?
Does Sleit even have a “paying” job at the moment? Is Vengroff paying him well enough to have turned his back on a 17 year friendship and his handy work which I am certain he has been overly compensated for if I have read this story correctly. Who is this guy? He is a nobody!
I say let Mr. Wilen continue his great work he has been doing for over two decades and let Vengroff make his money elsewhere. To Sleit I will say, McDonald’s is always hiring and PLEASE STOP hurting our city!
If the city has contributions to keep this dream alive I would say it is time to step up Sarasota! And yes, I mean the city commission and anyone else who may provide help for this positive essential program! This article touches a nerve and as a citizen of Sarasota I feel obligated to help fight / find a way to help Coach Wilen with this horrible nightmare in which Vengroff and his handy-man seem to have put the city of Sarasota in today!
Simply mind-blowing and Vengroff going on record saying that this Father-Figure / Coach Wilen has done nothing for 20 years is simply ignorant. From the sounds of it Coach Wilen has helped hundreds and possibly thousands in his over 20 years! Vengroff says “nothing”… Mind-blowing and disgusting!
Good luck Sarasota Boxing Club & Coach Wilen! You will have a lot of new friends, myself included!
September 9th, 2009 at 8:47 pm
Can someone tell me if Vengroff sits on the board of directors of this non profit organization?
If he does not than he is just another business man trying to get a free ride on the coat tails of Coach Wilen. One could see this as hypocrisy at it’s best with a misguided “rainbow” he would like to provide? If Vengroff would like to invest 50-100 grand to start something new, one would think he could surely donate 20-30 grand to spruce up the place and help Wilen’s cause. Especially since he has yet to see Wilen do anything in over 20 years.
A bit rhetorical, however I wish all well and keep up the good work Coach Wilen. I am with the rest of the commentators “great article” Robert!
Cough up the money needed to do the right things for this organization if you have it Vengroff! Like the ole saying goes “put up, or shut up”.
Now just a quick sidebar, if I had the choice of investing 50-100,000 in an MMA place or helping provide a safe haven for individuals who need it, I would choose the later. Vengroff has shown where his thoughts are visible to all with his quote.
I think the song version I like the best is in Animal House by the late John Belushi, “Money”
“The best things in life are free, but you can give them to the birds and bees, I NEED MONEY, that’s what I want” (Barry Gordy) which Belushi sang in Animal House.
September 9th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
So I already left a comment, but I just wanted to get this out there:
I’m the President of Circle K International at a local college, and have actually met Coach Wilen, and I feel that his cause is one that clearly deserves attention.
I would like to extend the help of the organization (CKI) that I am involved with by any means that can be thought of. I was thinking perhaps set up a match, sell tickets to raise money for the gym, CL can advertise for this, maybe? My club would be able to fund refreshments and supply the hands to be there and assist. I don’t know, just throwing ideas out there.
I think it’s a shame what’s happening, and CKI, which is part of the Kiwanis family, focuses on helping children,adolescents, young adults, etc. that are at-risk(whether it be abuse, drugs, homelessness, etc.).
Anyway, if anyone has a viable idea/plan, let me know so that we can help out Coach Wilen and his outstanding cause.
September 10th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Tommy Pettiti is putting together an event for November 16th, where Cornell Harris Jr’s father “Short-Dog” will be a featured fighter, trying to fight in his son’s name and gain some closure following his death.
If Tommy doesn’t happen to read this, I will surely pass your generous offer along to both him and Coach Harold. Thank you and Milly: No, Mr. Vengroff is not on the board of The Sarasota Boxing Club – glad you liked the story.
Robert Johnson
September 10th, 2009 at 10:07 am
Jenna & Robert – You both have put the wheels in motion for what sounds like it could be a nice fundraiser for The Club. This could be just what Coach Wilen needs to get a new location! My comment was more along the lines of some new canvas, fans, a/c etc. but throwing a show would be very wise for The Club and if Tommy Pettiti, CKI, and others are willing to contribute their time and resources to this needed fundraiser, it would certainly help these kids.
Thank you for clarifying Robert and what a great offer from Jenna. Personally I have not had the pleasure of meeting Coach Wilen in person yet, but plan on it soon.
September 10th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Hi Jenna, Milly, Robert and all readers.
My name is Tommy Pettiti and I sit on The Board of Directors for The Sarasota Boxing Club and hold the seat of Public Relations. We are happy to be receiving this feedback brought to everyone by Creative Loafing and Robert Johnson! We at The Sarasota Boxing Club wish everyone well and always Welcome everyone to our place we call “Home” at our current location provided by Mr. Harvey Vengroff and where ever it may be in the future.
For any donations, future plans, ideas, or just would like to join what we call home / The Sarasota Boxing Club you may contact myself by email at sarasotaboxingclub@hotmail.com or by telephone 941-812-3276. You may also reach Coach Harold Wilen at coach_harold@yahoo.com or 941-586-2956 for any and all concerns relating to The Sarasota Boxing Club or if you just want to talk or need his help with anything. Our door is ALWAYS OPEN!
Thank you again Robert Johnson & Creative Loafing!
September 10th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
First and foremost, I am happy to have the chance to talk to the people of Manasota and address some facts.
My father, China Smith Sr., started my boxing career as an amateur, while I was still in my teens. I started at the Sarasota Boxing Club working with all types of trainers. Nathaniel Gates was one of the first boxing trainers in Sarasota. He was a professional boxer and fought all over the world. He trained my father and many of the fighters that have come through this town. He remains my one and only trainer to this day. He, Harold Wilen, and Alan Hill (R.I.P.) started the original Sarasota Boxing Club. Harold Wilen had nothing to do with my boxing career.
As far as boxing matches go, they all have to be sanctioned by the State Boxing Commission. To say a fighter is a bum is an insult to all the athletes in the sport. A real fighter, trainer, manager, or gentleman can vouch for that. What you say about others, you can be assured, others are saying about you. Many people have said negative things about my boxing career. I am proud of my record and I remain the only World Champion Boxer to come out of Sarasota. I won the World Championship twice, along with many other titles. I had opportunities to fight anywhere in the world, but it was an honor to fight in my hometown. It also gave a chance for other local boxers to fight on my undercard, many of whom came from Sarasota Boxing Club. I have paved the way for many others and I continue to support all the young athletes from Sarasota, Bradenton, and surrounding communities. My last fight, in December 2006 at Robart’s Arena, I won by first round knockout. I took time off from my own boxing career to go back into the community to help others.
I currently manage the boxing and fitness program at the Manatee Police Athletic League and I have an ongoing program at the Sarasota Military Academy. I do motivational speaking at the Salvation Army, YMCA, Boys and Girls Clubs, Compass Center, churches, many of the area’s schools, and for all types of organizations, big and small. I have my own nonprofit organization, Physical Foundations for Life, also known as China Smith and Friends Inc. We provide services for at risk youth such as: mentoring, health and fitness monitoring, teaching self-discipline, goal setting, responsibility, sportsmanship and respect for others. Our work with families helps build good communication, strong boundaries, and unity within the family. The reason I am called the “People’s Champ” is because of my dedication to help and support people of all ages, nationalities, and socio-economic backgrounds.
If you would like to find out more about my nonprofit organization or boxing training, please call my office at 941-587-1671.
One thing I can say about Harold Wilen, is that he is the only boxing coach in Sarasota to keep a gym open 7 days a week, for fighters to train. No one else does that.
September 11th, 2009 at 12:17 am
There were two things Coach Harold asked be excluded from our interviews: His wife and China. I, felt both were crucial to the story and asked they be included. He conceded.
That being said, China will be hard pressed to find anyone to disagree with what he wrote and I know I speak for many of us when I ’say’ that China Smith put Sarasota boxing on the map. The man is the real deal and continues to generate good things out of the community from which he came. My thanks to Al Cummings for helping me understand the complexities of this.
September 11th, 2009 at 10:08 am
Unfortunately the quest for money trumps the efforts of coach Harold.
Coach Harold has for years poured his heart and soul into his Club only to watch it be wrenched away by a debt collector and a toilet scrubber.
MMA is a brutal-violent sport that our youth should not be encouraged to participate in and a sport in which someone will eventually die.
As the article says the Sarasota Boxing Club is where ever Coach Harold is. I hope someone will step forward with an offer of a wharehouse so that Coach Harold can get away from the greed.
September 11th, 2009 at 5:38 pm
RL
Quite amusing my friend but true! I would also like to thank China for bringing up a long-time friend “Alan Hill” RIP. Alan supported The Sarasota Boxing Club for many years!
I would like to see someone step up with a new location as well RL! That would be ideal.
Just a QUICK NOTE: The Sarasota Boxing Club is NOT affiliated with any other website besides http://www.thesarasotaboxing.com and neither is Coach Harold Wilen. Alan “The Toilet Scrubber” as you call him has started a website call sarasotaboxingclub and is attempting to use Coach Harold’s background to get donations for an entity that does not even exist.
Thank you RL & China for your comments!
September 11th, 2009 at 5:40 pm
typo**** our correct website is http://www.thesarasotaboxingclub.com thank you
September 13th, 2009 at 5:55 am
[...] Robert Johnson wrote an interesting post today onCoach Harold Wilen and the Sarasota Boxing <b>Club</b> have been helping <b>…</b>Here’s a quick excerpt [...]
September 15th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Its a sad day at The Former Sarasota Boxing Club. NOBODY has done more for boxing in sarasota then Coach Harold.
September 16th, 2009 at 11:22 am
I have been a professional boxer and affiliated with boxing in every capacity for 50 years. I am Chief of Officials and Secretary for USA Boxing, Florida Association. I know Harold since 1985 and I don’t know of a harder worker when it comes to boxing. I trained boxers at his gym and know him obviously through amateur boxing. This Allen, who was supposedly a friend, undermined him and took over Harvey V’s facility that Harold created. If Allen did this to you, what would you think of him.
September 18th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
I met Coach Harold 6 months ago and at 43 he changed my outlook on life. I work for one of the largest non profit organizations in the country and this guy is the real deal. We need to help keep a legend alive and as Mr Smith said he operates 7 days a week. He needs help to keep the boxing club open to continue to help kids and adults like me keep there health an offer an alternitive to the chain store type fitness places out there.
Call the coach and he can help you as he has helped me and from what I have seen a hell of a lot of kids,this guy Alan has helped the Little Debbie snack cake sales and probaly his own wallet. He said he coaches mma unless that stands for most muffins allowed,i do not think so. Make a local difference join the gym and exercise like me and lose weight with a great coach.
September 27th, 2009 at 6:04 pm
coach Harold is the best coach ever man, he loves all his boxers like if we were his family.
September 29th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I trained at the New Sarasota Boxing Club from 1993 to 1995. During the day, I studied politics and philosophy at New College. On the evenings and weekends, I learned the art and science of boxing from Harold. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Harold and encourage others to help him find the best possible gym to train future fighters.
Harold is a boxing genius, the equivalent of a ten-degree black belt in other martial arts. He has a jeweler’s eye for correct form and a general’s gift for knowing how to set up and defeat an opponent. There is a simple test to see Harold in action. Watch a fight with him—on television or in person—and listen as he whispers under his breath early in the match how it is going to end. He can tell you, within the first round, what weakness is going to be exploited and how. Any fighter is fortunate to have Harold in his or her corner.
Harold is one of the most dedicated and generous people I have ever met. During my time at his gym, there were stretches where the gym housed three people: Harold, Johnny “Ghetto Blaster” Williams, and me. Normally, Johnny and I would warm up, hit the bags, and then spar. When we were done, Johnny and I would go home to eat dinner and Harold would stay at the gym. The sign posted on the door said that the gym closed at 7:30, but it would have been perfectly understandable if Harold called it a day and went home to rest. No way. Harold would stay until 8, 8:30, on the chance that a future champion would walk through his door.
A boxing coach can only fully reveal his or her talents with the right student. Johnny Williams—with a slight change of circumstances—could have become world champion on one of the most famous boxing cards in history. Maria Sharapova honed her warrior spirit with Harold, but she plays a different sport. I would have loved to have been Harold’s prize pupil, but like a high-school pitcher who tops out in the low 80’s, I never had the physical gifts to reach the next level. Still, Harold has done an outstanding job with the boxers and resources he has had.
Harold deserves praise for helping clean-up tough neighborhoods and turning people’s lives around. I know that I am grateful every day for what I learned in the ring, particularly the ability to think clearly and calmly under pressure. Yet Harold is not a saint giving alms to whoever walks into his gym. He is a boxing master who—as soon as a young Roy Jones or Winky Wright walks into his gym—will put Sarasota on the international boxing map. Let’s do everything we can to support Coach Harold.
October 20th, 2009 at 6:51 am
[...] Harold Wilen and the Sarasota Boxing Club have been giving troubled Sarasota kids an outlet for decades, but you know what, they just weren’t earning enough money. So the man who owns the Boxing [...]
October 30th, 2009 at 8:52 am
[...] The Sarasota Boxing Club (which Contributing Writer Robert Johnson profiled at length in early September) has finally found a new home: a gym near 15th Street and Lime Avenue. Bookmark [...]
November 6th, 2009 at 11:45 am
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