Yuma's Rosales Finds Direction Through Youth Boxing Program
BY JOE GENZEL, Sun Staff Writer
Published on: May 13, 2006
On the street, Maria Rosales looks like your everyday 16-year-old high school sophomore, complete with a mouth full of braces adorned with pink rubber bands that only a teenager would pick out.
But on this warm afternoon in a sweaty old building with insulation hanging from the ceiling and just enough room for a boxing ring and a few punching bags, Rosales is doing something most girls in Yuma would never think of — working combinations inside the squared circle with coach Billy Ortega, a boxing veteran, who’s been affiliated with the sport for almost four decades.
"Before I started boxing I wasn’t really focused on school, and I would get in trouble a lot," said Rosales, who was one of a handful of boxers working out at the Yuma County Youth Boxing Association’s gym Thursday. "Once I started coming here my time was spent here. I was always in the gym training for my next fight."
Rosales, a 107-pounder, who has a record of 3-2 and has been in the sport for three years, will be joined by a host of boxers from Arizona, Southern California and the Imperial Valley at 2 p.m. today at the Yuma Readiness and Community Center for Ringside Challenge 27, an Olympic-style boxing event hosted by YCYBA.
"The last few years females have got into the sport," said YCYBA president Fred Block. "Not only are they good boxers, but they’re dedicated athletes. One thing about females is they’re very intense, and they won’t back down from each other."
When Rosales told her friends that she was going to take up boxing they told her she was crazy.
And when she tells boys she’s a fighter, their response goes something like this.
"They don’t believe me because they don’t think I’m that kind of girl," Rosales said. "They always say I’m really girly. I may look girly sometimes, but not in the ring."
Anyone, man or woman, that questions Rosales’ boxing status only needs to come to one of her workouts to see that she is for real.
Rosales is at the gym five days a week for nearly three hours followed by three-mile runs every other day to build up endurance and stamina.
"They have to be in real good condition," Ortega said. "There have been times when her legs give out. So she’s still trying to build on that."
Before she started boxing Rosales admitted that she had a short fuse and was prone to getting in a few street fights.
But the sport has kept her out of trouble, and she said her test results at Yuma High have seen the most improvement, after all, she must keep her grades up in order to continue boxing.
Rosales is also extremely dedicated to boxing and said that she gives up plenty of weekends at the mall or parties to go to the gym.
It’s something her friends don’t understand.
"I could be doing something else like just be hanging out with my friends, or going out to a party," Rosales said. "They ask me what I’m going to do this weekend, and I’ll be like ’I gotta go to the gym.’ They’ll say ’why the gym? You’re always there.’
"I just have to be here. I’d rather be here than anywhere." Rosales is just one of many boxers trying to revive this storied sport that has been struggling to find an identity and an audience in recent years.
Though boxing seems to be on the comeback trail, at least in the lower weight divisions, it is important to men like Ortega to get as many young people inside the ring as possible.
It also helps keep kids off the street and saves them from going down the wrong path.
"It’s really important, because instead of fighting in school they come here," Ortega said. "Here they get in any kind of trouble and they’re out. They can’t afford to get in trouble."
Joe Genzel can be reached at
jgenzel@yumasun.com or 539-6883.
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