How Los Angeles boxing gym gives hope to those with none – in and out of the ring

Long Beach in Southern California, with its year-round sun and proximity to the sea, may look idyllic. But even in a city as gang-plagued as Los Angeles, Long Beach has an especially fearsome reputation.

For 20-year-old Jared Gomez, growing up in the neighbourhood was hectic, he says. “I got in fights. I tried to fight two teachers in high school. I was always getting kicked out of school, getting suspended.”

Gomez seemed destined for the same life as many other young men in the area – one of violence, incarceration and, all too often, premature death. But if fighting was getting him into trouble, it would also play a part in saving his life.

Videos of local youths in the boxing ring started popping up on Gomez’s Instagram feed a few months ago. He overheard friends talking Jackrabbit Boxing and Fitness, so he decided to pay a visit.

“Boxing has helped me grow a lot, as a person and as a man. It’s kept me out of trouble,” he says, sitting in the ring one hot afternoon in June. “I’m not really a hothead like I used to be. I don’t pop off like I used to.”

Gomez has found something in the ring that evaded him on the violent streets. Though some observers may find the sport barbaric, for Gomez boxing has given him a feeling that he has trouble putting into words: “It’s just kind of peaceful.”

Jackrabbit Boxing and Fitness is a cavernous space in the heart of East Long Beach. The gym is dimly lit and spartan, with a ring in the middle, and belts and pendants hanging from the walls. Visitors are greeted by an affectionate, slobbering pitbull terrier, and a smaller dog following nervously behind. The gym is bustling with men and youths like Gomez.

“Long Beach is synonymous with gang culture,” says Trevor Sambrano, a trainer at the gym. “Even where we sit right now, there have been shoot-outs in this parking lot.”

According to Sambrano, the Long Beach area has suffered decades of impoverishment and gang violence. “We’re talking about generations here who haven’t had a lot of opportunities. There’s not a lot of jobs, and the jobs that have been here, for the most part, have closed down because of globalisation. The world does not give a f*** about you.”

Jackrabbit got its start when Ivan Sylve, a trainer and the current owner, arrived on the scene in 2011.

Sylve says he never had any intention of owning a gym, and was content with his local tax and bookkeeping business, when he first stopped by, looking for a space to train his then seven-year-old son, Ashton. The owner at the time let Sylve and his son train for a small membership fee.

Soon, other kids from the neighbourhood started hanging around, enthralled by the training sessions.

“These three kids were waiting by the back door. And they saw my son and said they wanted to be like him,” Sylve recalls. “I said, ‘I tell you what. If you want to box, I’ll pay for your membership.’”

Two years later, when those same boys, now teenagers, were making a name for themselves on the amateur boxing circuit, the owner offered to sell Sylve the gym, but he had no interest.

“I said no. I knew I’d lose money,” he recalls. “But we got off the phone and I couldn’t sleep that night. I was like, ‘Damn, if I do leave, these kids will be back in the street.’”

The next day, Sylve bought the gym, though he realised it would take more than just a place to box to really create change in the community. Local kids would show up for training, malnourished. Some lacked the resources to buy training shoes or basic workout clothes. Many had been traumatised by systemic poverty, police brutality, violence and unstable home environments.

In one especially tragic instance, a fighter who seemed uncharacteristically lacklustre before a major tournament confessed that his mother had made him sell his blood to help put food on the table.

Instead of turning away kids without the means to box, Sylve began reaching into his own pocket to feed them, and giving them money for clothes and shoes. But the scale of the problem was daunting. He envisaged the gym becoming a comprehensive, community-based foundation, and in Sambrano, he found the perfect partner.

“There are still young men that are coming through to the gym that don’t have access to food; that don’t have clothes,” says Sambrano. “So Ivan and I said, ‘Look, if we could, ideally everyone that needs clothes or food or just an economic support system, we would do that.”

Together they spun off a new entity. In addition to Jackrabbit Boxing and Fitness gym, they created Jackrabbit Boxing Academy, a non-profit with a simple mission: “We feed the community.”

Sambrano hails from the equally rough neighbourhood of South Central Los Angeles, and knows first-hand how boxing can save a youth adrift.

“Oftentimes, when you come from communities like this, then there’s a lack of discipline,” he says. “Especially in Eastside Long Beach, it’s pretty often that you run across a young man whose father has been incarcerated, had their life taken by the streets.

“And you need father figures; you need someone to look after young men giving them structure. You would be surprised how responsive they are to having some direction.”

Sincere Dameko Brooks was one such youth. When he started going to Jackrabbit he was just seven years old – one of those kids hanging around the back door watching Sylve’s son train.

He was already in trouble, spending his days wandering the rough streets of Long Beach.

“When I was younger, I was more like a troublemaker,” says Brooks, “Fighting and stealing, that type of stuff.”

Now 18 years old, Brooks has an impressive 54 amateur fights under his belt, and says he is no longer into causing trouble.

“I want to turn pro,” he says, with quiet confidence. “I want people to look up to me as someone who made something, who came from nothing.”

As Brooks has grown, so has the gym. Now an entire section of the space – just behind the ring and across from a wall of championship belts – is occupied by food, a folding table heaped with cans and packaged goods, spilling onto the floor and piling up against the wall behind. The food has been donated to the community for its many hungry mouths by the trainers and their families.

“That’s all from us,” says Sylve, “Some from my dad, some from my brother, but we haven’t asked for anything from the community.”

The gym also offers basic financial education and financial support to community members who most need it, boxers and non-boxers alike. Most of Jackrabbit’s outreach efforts benefit people with no connection to boxing whatsoever.

These days Sylve spends time on the streets around the gym as well as inside the ring, handing out fliers alerting the community to free food assistance, weekly fitness sessions for seniors, and basic classes on balancing finances. It is no easy task, but Sylve could not be happier.

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“I didn’t really like doing taxes. I did it because I made a lot of money,” he says. “But I found my joy helping kids here, found my joy in helping the community. Now I put all my effort, my time, my money right here, to build this.”

Today Jackrabbit trains more than 100 fighters, most of whom are young men, though Sylve says he has plans to attract more women to the gym by marketing to them directly.

Ashton Sylve is now a nine-time national amateur national champion, and a two-time international champion, and still trains at the gym with his father.

More importantly, Ivan Sylve says, the non-profit academy reaches more than 1,000 families each year, quietly supporting the community, helping those who need it most, and asking for nothing in return.