BOXING CLEVER!
Four Kings Boxing Club is about much more than boxing, it’s about making the most of your life
STEPHEN COUGHLAN loves everything about boxing. He adored being a boxer, he loves coaching boxers and he loves talking about boxing. He loves what boxing does for people, how it lifts them, helps them, guides them, humbles them. He loves every single detail about it and in Four Kings Boxing Club he gets to share that love with his growing number of members.
The Bray native was a fine pugilist in his own right – won four Leinster crowns and was beaten in two All-Ireland finals, one of them in Olympic year, the same year he watched his club mates Adam Nolan and Katie Taylor set sail for London on the Irish team.
‘I won four Leinster titles and was beaten in two All-Ireland finals. I was beaten in the national final in the Olympic year, 2012. I was on the back-up team for the Olympics, the year Adam Nolan and Katie Taylor went. I was their sparring partner in Bray Boxing Club,’ said Stephen whose boxing career was cut short due to injury.
‘I got injured then in May, 2012, I dislocated my shoulder when things were going well so I was knocked back a bit. I was a year and a half waiting for an operation. I did get back but when I came back, I cracked a rib. I just kept having loads of different problems and I never did get back. I even tried to come back last year even though I’m coaching. I was sparring out in Dublin and I tore a rotator cuff muscle in my other shoulder. I don’t mind. I couldn’t have done more with my career but it just didn’t work out. I’m happy enough to coach now and just see the lads come on, that’s my motivation now. The motivation I had when I was boxing, I never lost it, I was always trying to get back. I was always determined that I would box again and do well. All that motivation has shifted towards the coaching now and I just want to get the most out of the lads and fulfill all their potentials.
‘You nearly feel like you’re in there (in the ring) as well. You’re so close to the lads in the club, you’re training alongside them, you’re doing everything you can to get them into the position to win their fights and prepare them the best you can. And then you get in there and you feel so close to them that it’s like you’re getting in there yourself. I’m more involved than I thought I would be; it’s more personal; and it’s so much, you take so much more on board as a coach than I thought you would be,’ he added.
Stephen has a dedicated and enthusiastic crew around him with former Bray Boxing Club member Seamus Allen, Ste Coughlan, Stephen Moran and Robbie Doyle all offering invaluable assistance while Greg Tierney and Alan Joyce are board members and play a huge part in the club..
Coughlan, who picked up the Wicklow Sports award of ‘Coach of the Year’ at last year’s event, must also thank his wife Debbie who helped him find the inspiration for the club’s name.
‘I didn’t want to call it Greystones Boxing Club or Kilcoole Boxing Club, I wanted to come up with a different name for it, and my wife helped me pick the name for it, actually,’ Stephen in reply to a query regarding the name and after he had revealed that Four Kings has no permanent home.
‘Like, Enniskerry Boxing Club was in Bray for a while, and Rathnew Boxing Club are in Wicklow town at the moment.
‘I was kind of going, ‘how am I going to come up with a name for this, and she was like, ‘well is there any group of boxers that you like?’ And I said that there was a group of boxers from the 1980s and there was a book written about them, and there was a legendary rivalry between the four of them and they were called the Four Kings and they all fought each other. And she said, ‘what about Four Kings Boxing Club?’, and I was humming and hawing and eventually I said I’d just go with it.’
Four Kings Boxing Club is small but growing, young but thriving, humble yet hugely ambitious, and then encompasses much more than just the sport of boxing. For Stephen Coughlan, the club and his coaching should help improve the lives of his members in terms of confidence and self-esteem.
‘Ambitions have always been to have a large club, an open facility that we can serve as much as the public as we can around Greystones, Newtown, Kilcoole and those areas,’ said Stephen. ‘And just to give confidence to the lads, improve people’s self-esteem, and make them challenge themselves in hard ways.
‘I think young people need to expose themselves to hard things, not wrap themselves up and have it easy all the time. You need to challenge yourself and work hard towards thing rather than have instant gratification like we have nowadays with phones and with the click of a button we can get what we want. It’s good to be able teach them to work towards something slowly, and you train week in, week out, and you might be training six months before you get a fight in the boxing club, but you’re working hard towards them. It’s like you’re preparing them for life, for college – you work four years in college before they get a reward at the end. Boxing teaches them all those things. What you get instantly from boxing is a confidence boost. Straight away they get a huge burst of confidence. All you need to do is put on a pair of boxing gloves and hit a punch bag or hit anything hard, a pair of pads, automatically you feel good about yourself. We just want to grow the thing as much as possible, and grow the club like that.
‘I don’t expect everyone who comes through the door to be a champion and to turn them away if they’re not going to be a champion. I want to be able to get the most out of that person, whether they never box, maybe they want to lose weight or gain confidence or improve any aspect of your life. Boxing is a great way to spend your time rather than sitting at home every evening watching television,’ he added.
If you’re interested in taking up boxing when this Covid-19 emergency eases and some semblance of normality returns to our country then you can contact Stephen Coughlan on 086 3201843 or you can message the Four Kings Facebook page for more details.