Mother, daughter chase boxing dreams together
EL PASO – The sacrifice is impossible to measure as the hours pile upon hours, the sweat fills bucket after bucket and even a bit of blood and possibly a tear or two accumulate in the hard-knock, unforgiving journey that is boxing.
But both the pain and the joy are best when shared. And no one can share it like daughter, mother and grandmother. The sport has gradually built an indelible bond between three generations.
Kayla Gomez is only 14 years old, an eighth-grader at Bel Air Middle School in El Paso. But she is already a five-year veteran of the demanding sport of boxing and she has won six national championships and earned a spot on the U.S. National Team. She dreams of going to the Olympics and then going pro.
Crystal Aceves is 32 and is also a fiveyear veteran of the sport. She has competed in three national tournaments and has two second-place finishes and one third-place.
Cindy Aceves is mother and grandmother, coach, travel partner and confidant for the two in their fistic quest.
“I had boxed a little a while back but I didn’t take it seriously,” Crystal says. “I decided to take it up again and take it seriously, and I brought Kayla with me.”
Kayla says, “I had seen a video on (U.S. Olympian) Marlen Esparza and I was interested.”
“I wasn’t too sure she would like it,” Crystal says. “But she took to it right away. She was a natural. The coaches were talking about how good she was after just a week.”
“They train for hours and hours every day,” Cindy says. “At first, I was just bringing them water and encouraging them. I’d done some karate and kickboxing. But another coach encouraged me to get my coaching license.
“I’m so proud of them,” she says. “It’s just awesome to see them compete at this level.”
The mother-daughter duo goes through the same intense practice sessions, the same fitness and strength training.
“We spend between four and five hours a day training,” Crystal says. “We train and spar ... from 6 until 9 each night. Then we go to Planet Fitness for our cardio work.”
Kayla smiles and says: “We do most of our running on weekends and when school is out. ... We also hike a lot. That’s what we enjoy doing. We get in a workout while having fun, too.”
“Sometimes I forget she’s just a little girl,” Crystal says. “She works out as hard as I do. Once, we were running and she kept pushing because there were some teenage boys running in front of us and she didn’t want them to beat us. She’s very competitive.
“This takes a lot of sacrifice. Family and friends, they have to understand what we are doing and understand that we have to train and this is pretty much year-round.”
“I remember when Kayla first started,” says Ladislao Vicencio, local director of the Golden Gloves and himself a three-time Golden Gloves state champion in the 1970s. “She was so small. But there she was ... getting ready for her first fight. She was working on her footwork all afternoon. Then, that night, I was walking at Album Park and there she was, out running with her grandmother, getting ready for that fight.
“It is amazing their work ethic,” Vicencio says. “Kayla is going to be something to be reckoned with. She has that fighting spirit. She and her mother work out every day, and every day is a championship workout. They are both forces to be reckoned with.”
And, despite it all, Kayla Gomez finds time to be a teenager. She plays the guitar, she loves to read, she’s a good writer, she’s a member of the National Junior Honor Society, and someday she would like to be a veterinarian.
“Kayla misses a lot of school with these tournaments,” Crystal says. “But she makes up her work right away. The teachers tell me she misses a week and she still gets her work in before some of the students who are there every day.”
The dream is forever out there, tantalizingly beckoning as they continue to work, work right through the blood, sweat and tears.
“Kayla asked me if you can be a professional boxer and a veterinarian,” Crystal says. “I tell her she can be anything she wants.”
The dreams are there. And the journey — hard and unforgiving and joyous as it is — continues.