AMATEURS
The club has a new gym and a new vision for what it wants to achieve
The club with a new gym and vision
IT’S a good time for Stonebridge boxing club. The gym has moved to a new location and two of the club’s boxers, Kolowole Kayejo and Adam Bencheman, have won the national Development championships (see page 43).
The new gym, with a fine view over Wembley stadium, is being kitted out with its rent secured and supported by Brent council. “The biggest thing about what’s happened to us here is the transition we’ve had from our old place to our new place was made very easy for us by Brent Council and its leader Muhammad Butt. He’s gone way beyond and above what I believe any leader or councillor has done. For an organisation that they can actually see is helping people and changing a lot of lives,” Aamir Ali, who runs the club, said. “Other councils should look at what the leader Muhammad Butt has done for us and actually use that as a model and use that with other clubs. Because there’s a lot of clubs out there that need help.”
On any given night there can be between 40 and 50 young people training at Stonebridge. “[They’re] not out on the streets, not playing Playstation, not even eating a TV dinner,” Ali said. “Getting themselves into the gym and working themselves into shape or whatever. Not only are they doing it physically but they’re doing it mentally as well. They’re joining into a community that has one thing in mind and that is to do the best they can for themselves.”
His ambitions however extend further for the club. In its new location, on the floor below, is a college offering a BTEC in sports science, boxers there can now link it to their training to get an educational qualification. He’s also looking in to setting up an apprenticeship scheme and route into work for the boxers at his club. “Everyone’s talking about sports as a diversion, mentors, all of this type of this stuff and it’s great, sports work as a diversion for the kid that wants to put the time and effort in to go and get healthy and go and live that lifestyle and go and do it. It helps,” he said.
Ali has found a lot of the boxers training at Stonebridge do need to find a way to earn money. “How can I get these kids jobs where they’re getting money and where they can do boxing as well? How can I do the two together? So I approached L&Q Housing association,” Ali said. “How can we work together to get these kids apprenticeships with guaranteed jobs at the end where they learn a skill. Part of this apprenticeship is they need to be in the boxing gym. So not only are we giving them a healthy lifestyle but we’re also giving them an education. We [want to] also give them work experience, we’d also give them a trade and we’d guarantee them a job,” Ali said of his hopes for the plan. “If we can get that going I think that will be fantastic.
“We change lives in here, but we’re actually have the opportunity of changing lives when they leave here.”