TULSA, Okla. — "I was always like I would love to fight, so I would always end up fighting," said Samuel Rosales. I was ending up on the wrong path. I was mostly a hot head. I would take everything to hard. I wouldn't really communicate how I wanted to. I was always getting into unnecessary trouble."
Until a friend brought him to the HAC gym in East Tulsa. Through its Home and Courage Athletics charity, he's learning to channel his love of fighting into amateur boxing.
"Samuel, when he first got here, he was ah, a little lost," said HAC co-owner Scotty Kramer. "Maybe some trouble with the law and didn't really have the nuclear home life that a lot of kids need."
Hope and Courage Athletics provides both to at-risk young men through boxing and more.
"If, say, a kid in our local community doesn't have a safe place to go after school, we let them come here," said Kramer. "We'll take those same kids who maybe don't have the best home life or parents to take them to scrimmages or practices or games. We'll go to their games and sit with them and show them somebody is proud of them."
After two years in the boxing ring, Rosales's flying fists are winning bouts and big trophy belts.
Gonzalo Parra told 2 News that he's always loved boxing and even had a bag in his backyard, but he came to the gym shy and stressed, wanting to find a way to release it and his anger.
"Whatever anger I have inside me, I just let it out here in the gym," he said. I don't let that anger out with other people. I let it out all in here."
"When they come here, they have expectations given to them," said Kramer. "If they agree to those expectations, they're welcome here. Right, you clean up after yourself. You're respectful to the people around you. You work hard. You put in what is put into you, and we build a community that way."
A community giving Parra a place to feel safe while developing his love of boxing.
And encouraged Rosales to not only finish school, but take extra classes and get a job while working on his dream of one day becoming a pro boxer.
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