Teammates

I have always been a team player.   Literally.   Since I was a child, up through my teenage years and early 20’s, I always played team sports.  Soccer, lacrosse, one ill-fated season on the middle school softball team (what do you mean I shouldn’t slide into first base?) – I always and only played sports where I was a part of a team.  Sure, there were always individual statistics; goals scored, assists doled out, individual accolades.  But when it came down to it, my personal success meant nothing if not for the contribution to the success of the team.  It didn’t matter if I had 6 goals and 3 assists in the game; if my team lost, those stats had little value.  And sure, I had to do some training and work on my own in order to be successful: go for a few training runs, practice corner kick placement, spend some Saturday afternoons with my lacrosse stick and the wall.  But the majority of my hours spent practicing were spent practicing with others.  My teammates.   So it’s kind of funny that as an adult, the sports that I would choose to focus my time and energy on, running and boxing, are individual sports.  If I have a bad race, I can blame no one other than myself.  Or the cocktails that I had the night before.  Eh, no, wait, still my fault.  And boxing?  Me against my opponent.  The two of us, in the ring, one on one.  Nothing more individual than that.  Sure, I am fortunate enough to have some strong coaching behind me, but when it comes down to it, Marc isn’t the one fighting the fight.  I am.  It’s just me and me alone.   After I received my email from Haymakers for Hope, welcoming me to the organization, I was talking to Julie Kelly about some of the logistics.  I was curious, too.  Would anyone else be training at Nonantum?  Yes, she told me, there would be two other women fighting out of Nonantum.  One of which would be Marc’s wife, Shannon.  Marc had told me about Shannon before, that we were close in age, around the same size.  The panic set in.  Would I be fighting her?  Was she my opponent?  How could I fight my trainer’s wife?  “Relax,” Julie said to me.  “She’s not your opponent, she’s your teammate.”   She’s my teammate?  What did that mean?  How does a fighter have teammates?  I mean, I had never thought of myself as totally alone in this sport; after all, I had my coaches and trainers behind me.  Marc, who works week in and week out to help me grow into a technically sound fighter, who has taught me how to strategize and think about boxing in ways I never knew possible.  Chris Bullock and Greg Lazeren, the trainers who built the boxing program at Bosse Sports, who first introduced me to the sport, who helped lay the foundation upon which I continue to build.  But teammates?  And then it hit me.  These fantastic Nonantum women, these women who have been beating me up every Wednesday night, at least one day each weekend, and the occasional Monday and Friday, these women are my teammates.   And like any good teammate, they do so much more than just punch me in the face.   There is the physical practice and motivation that teammates provide.  Back in February, Marc told me that in addition to working with him weekly, it was time for me to start sparring again.  He said that Kate Durgin would be the perfect sparring partner for me; she was in my weight class, was in the gym training hard like I was, and was super experienced.  Oh, and she just won the Golden Gloves.  Oh yeah, she just WON the Golden Gloves.   And now I was going to get in the ring with her.  To say I was terrified the first time we sparred would be an understatement.  But now, 6 months later, I am a stronger, more skilled fighter, thanks to the many, many rounds that Kate and I have done (and as an added bonus, she doesn’t scare me quite as much as she used to).  I can only hope that our relationship is reciprocal, that I have provided her with the challenge and physical push that she has provided me.  In addition to being a living, breathing, quick footed [not so] heavy bag, Kate has also become my friend.  There’s nothing that brings people closer together than spending hours in the ring nailing each other with body shots.  I am lucky to call Kate my friend and my teammate; I want to make her proud when I step in the ring on October 17^th.   Teammates can also provide mental and emotional support.  Julie Marobella is one of the teammates that does that for me.  Within five minutes of leaving Nonantum after our Wednesday night sparring sessions, my phone is at my ear and Julie is on the other end of it.  She is my only teammate who has children, a husband, and a career to balance.  I have driven home in tears, complaining about what a bad night I had, how exhausted I am, how I can’t believe there was any part of me that thought that as a 35 year old mother of three making an attempt to enter back into the workforce, that I could possibly embark on an amateur boxing stint.  Julie talks me down, restores the calm, and helps motivate me to walk back into Nonantum another day.  And then, the next week, it’s my turn to do that for her.  Like I said, teammates support each other.  An added bonus to my friendship with Julie is that we were friends before boxing, we live in the same town, have kids the same age, and husbands that are friendly.  I’d like to think that when John and Brian are on the golf course or having a beer they are talking about how wonderful it is that their wives are so dedicated to their sport.  I said I’d LIKE to think that’s what they are talking about.  Not that I ACTUALLY think that’s what they are talking about.   And Shannon Gargaro, now she’s my teammate, too.  We are embarking on this Haymakers for Hope journey together.  She is newer to boxing and fighting than I am, so now it’s my turn to show someone the ropes, just like Kate and Julie and Dena and Amanda have done for me.  Help her make her way through the gym and drills and training to fight.  We click.  We are both type A perfectionists; neither one of us is put out by the other one’s need to be organized and have everything planned out.  We work well in the ring, and get along well outside of it.   When I step into the ring on October 17^th, it will be my fight.  Me alone, physically, facing my opponent.  But there is pride and identity that comes from being a Nonantum fighter, being part of the Nonantum team.  My teammates have helped me grow into the fighter that I am today, the fighter that I will be on fight night.  I would not want to do any of this without them.  In fact, I could not do it without them.  Even though I alone am in the ring fighting my fight, I have my team behind me.  Because I am a team player.