TWENTY coaches participated in a Jamaica Boxing Association (JBA) coaching clinic at Stanley Couch Gym in Kingston on Wednesday.

They said they were pleased to receive their certificate of participation and the information imparted to them by Canadian sports performance coach Ava Sturm.

Coach Odean Taylor of Fit Like a Fighter Initiative in Portmore endorsed the clinic.

“The session was very informative,” he said. “We were taken back to basics where we were taught and a demonstration was done of things that we can incorporate easily in our training sessions to help with creating a little bit more baseline of where to start with new fighters or persons who are just starting out with boxing.

“One of the things she was talking about mostly is the jab, how the rotation of the body is important, where the shoulder is positioned, where the fist is positioned, where to aim with the arm that is throwing the jab, how your body should be aligned — all of those things just from jabbing.

“So, she showed us the different steps to go through to identify these things, then making sure that we correct the misconceptions or the incorrect forms to make sure that they are throwing the jabs the correct way.”

Sturm is pleased with how the coaches received the information imparted during the session. “Everyone is so professional and everyone is so engaged today, and there are people asking questions and they received me very well,” she said. “Everything went very smoothly and I’m really excited for what the future holds for all of these coaches”

JBA President Stephen Jones said that the clinic is intended to help the coaches in a number of ways, including preparing boxers for the JBA’s Futures — A Gloves Over Guns Initiative of monthly boxing fight cards, high school boxing, and the Road to 2028 Olympics.

“At least half of them are already coaches, and the other half would be those that are mentors in certain areas, or physical education teachers in certain schools that want to bring boxing into their programmes,” he said. “So, they want to bring the discipline that we have been instilling in the participants that take part in the futures programme that takes place monthly, the Gloves Over Guns mentorship that we have weekly, and so they’ve been asking, making requests on how we can get other schools involved. Which works for us because it’s been our goal, our number one priority to get boxing into more schools because we believe that’s how we’ll instil more transformation in community.

“And the other side now would be that we are now a national federation affiliated with World Boxing, which is the international federation leading towards the road to the Olympics, governing bodies for federations worldwide, and they have stipulated that we have to have national-level coaches on our databases that they can track, as well as us tracking them.”

The first Futures — A Gloves Over Guns Initiative fight card is scheduled for Saturday, February 22 at Stanley Couch Gym.