Fighting family wins three medals
St. Catharines Boxing Club well-represented in winners circle at national championships
The family that spars together wins together. Nowhere is this truer than at the St. Catharines Boxing Club now that the Canadian championships have wrapped up for another year.
Stephen Ryan, his younger brother Gerry and their cousin, James Hughes, combined to go 7-2, each returning home from Edmonton with a medal.
After a loss in his first fight at nationals last year knocked Hughes out of contention for a medal, the 17-year-old went 3-0 in the youth 69-kilogram division on the way to winning the gold medal.
Stephen Ryan, 19, was 3-0 heading into the final before settling for the silver medal in a controversial to 4-1 decision to Lucas Bahdi of Niagara Falls.
Gerry Ryan, 17, followed up a victory in his opening fight with a loss in the semifinals and earned a bronze in the youth 64 kg class.
Hughes said his mindset was different heading to nationals this year as he was ranked at the top of his age group.
“I knew what to expect going into weigh-ins and what-not,” he said. “I had a better feeling going in.”
His first fight, against Christopher Guerrero of Quebec, ended in a 2-1 split decision in Hughes’ favour.
While the Grade 12 student at St. Francis Catholic Secondary School said it could have gone “either way,” he didn’t consider the fight a wake-up call.
Hughes then beat Jamall Omar Polack, also from Quebec, in a unanimous 3-0 decision that was anything but easy.
“It probably felt closer than the first one just because there were more punches thrown, and more landed on me.”
Hughes used his height advantage over Nick Young to score a unanimous decision over the British Columbia fighter for the gold medal.
“He was kind of more like a brawler, I just stayed away and picked him off.”
Stephen Ryan failed to qualify for nationals last year losing to the eventual Canadian champion at the Ontario championships.
In his first trip to nationals in 2016 he lost to the eventual champion and failed to finish the tournament in the top three.
Returning to his native St. Catharines empty-handed would
‘‘ “I just had it in my mind, I just knew it, and I think he knew it, too.” STEPHEN RYAN St. Catharines Boxing Club fighter
not be the case this time out. At Edmonton, a first-round knockout of Alberta’s Fred Burton and 5-0 decisions over the national team’s Rodolfo Velasquez and Quebec’s Kaemy Savoie guaranteed, at the very least, a silver medal.
In his second fight he was able to avenge a loss, in a 2-1 decision, to Velasquez that kept him out of nationals last year.
“I knew I had him, to tell you the truth, before I went into the fight,” Stephen Ryan said.
Bahdi had just knocked out two fighters, so Ryan came out a “little cautious” in the gold medal fight.
Ryan went to his corner after the fight confident that a strong finish after a tentative start would be enough to earn the decision over Bahdi.
“I thought I won it just by outworking him, out-punching him.”
Though disappointed that he had to settle for silver, Stephen Ryan didn’t feel bitter.
“No, not bitter, a learning experience,” he said. “I’m just going to have to do much, much better next year.”
Given the chance for a do-over in the final fight at nationals, the elder Ryan would have changed his fight plan.
“I think I would have gone harder a lot earlier.”
This was the fourth trip to nationals, and the fourth medal, for Gerry Ryan, a Grade 12 student at Laura Secord Secondary School in St. Catharines. He won gold in 2015, silver in 2016 and bronze at the Canadian championships last year.
Gerry Ryan went west hoping to return to the top step of the podium, but Dereck Pomerleau had other ideas as well as the confidence of a 2-0 record versus the St. Catharines boxer.
“The guy I lost to is just pretty hard to figure out,” he said of the Quebec fighter who earned a 3-0 decision in the semifinal on the way to winning the Canadian championship.
In his first fight at nationals this year, Gerry Ryan knocked out Nicholas Callahan in the third round.