More than a punch, by Delroy Sarpong

An original contemporary speech.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, councillors, families, and the forty or so young people at the back who are pretending not to be embarrassed by their coach: good evening.

Seventeen years ago, Eastgate Amateur Boxing Club was two punchbags, a cracked mirror and a borrowed key to a church hall that smelled of damp hymn books. We had six members. Three of them were my nephews, and they only came because their mum made them. Tonight there are a hundred and twenty names on our register, a waiting list as long as my arm, and a gym of our own above the old carpet warehouse on Station Road.

But I don’t want to talk about numbers. I want to talk about Kyle.

When Kyle first walked through our door he was fourteen. He had been excluded from two schools. He did not look anyone in the eye. He held his fists like someone expecting to be hit, because, as we found out later, he usually was. For the first month he didn’t throw a single punch. He skipped. He swept the floor. He watched. And then one Tuesday, without anyone asking, he stayed behind and helped me fold the mats.

Kyle is twenty-three now. He is a qualified electrician. He is sitting at table four, in a suit he says is too tight, and on Thursday nights he coaches our under-twelves. If you want to know what this club does, ask him. Or ask Priya, who was too shy to give her name at her first session and last month spoke in front of three hundred people at the regional championships. Or ask Marcus, whose mum told me he hadn’t sat at the dinner table with the family for a year until he started training, because now he’s too hungry not to.

People hear the word ‘boxing’ and think of violence. I understand that. But in seventeen years I have seen far more fights stopped by this sport than started by it. Boxing teaches you that you will get hit, and that you can get up. It teaches you to listen, because the coach in your corner can see what you can’t. It teaches you that respect is not something you demand; it is something you earn, one round at a time, with your gloves touching your opponent’s before the bell.

Our rules are simple. Turn up. Work hard. Shake hands. Nobody is turned away because they can’t pay, and nobody spars until they have learned to lose. Some of our members will win titles. Most won’t. All of them will leave knowing that someone believed they were worth the effort.

So this award does not belong to me. It belongs to every volunteer who has given up a Friday night to hold pads, to every parent who has driven a minibus to Doncaster in the snow, and to every young person who walked in angry and walked out a little taller.

Thank you. And Kyle: you can loosen the tie now.

Eastgate Amateur Boxing Club is described as a place that changes lives. How does the writer try to show this?

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