Claire Schultz | Staff Writer
Because of IHSAA rules, new senior Devyn Kelley has been denied the chance to play on the football team. Kelley, who came from a small school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was playing football midseason at his last school and was told that he could not play here at CG. Instead of playing football, Kelley has decided to get back into boxing, something he did regularly in Pennsylvania,
“I don’t consider boxing a sport. It’s more of a lifestyle, like you have to be so dedicated to do it. You know it’s not something that anybody can just pick up and you got to have the work ethic,” Kelley said.
A challenge Kelley is currently facing is that he cannot find a suitable gym in Indy. While boxing gyms were very common back in Philadelphia, they are a rarity in a state focused around basketball and football.
“I haven’t found a legit gym. You really have to test them out here because this isn’t really a boxing state.” Kelley said. “They said if you go to a gym, you have to go there and kind of act like you don’t know what you’re doing and see what they tell you. If they tell you the right stuff they know what they’re doing.”
Training to box is relatively complicated, and without a proper gym, it is even harder. Kelley has had to improvise with his workouts in order to get adequate training.
“It gets crazy,” Kelley said. “We get weighted vests and do jump ropes for about 30 minutes. Then we run stairs with the vest on and do push ups. We do the workout of 1000 push ups and like 300 pull-ups. Then we do a core workout, mostly everything is core, and then we do footwork and running. We run forever, I swear it feels like we run forever.”
Although Kelley is spending most of his time training for boxing, he has considered playing basketball during the winter season. Playing basketball would give Kelley a chance to play sports on a team during his last year of high school, but the CG sports program is much different from Kelley’s previous school.
“It’s kind of like reverse from where I’m from; it’s backwards,” Kelley said. “Where I’m from we’re all just pretty much athletes. It’s in our genes you know; we’re just already good at sports. Fundamentals, that’s kind of how it is here. Where I’m from, we just go out and play.”
Kelley will continue to solo train for boxing throughout the next few months until he finds a gym that suits his needs.
