Is Youth Boxing Safe?
By Max SchochetCarlos Picardi is looking for an opening. He finds it and unleashes a lightning-quick combination to his opponent’s head and torso.
The 15-year-old boxer has trained five days a week for a year to prepare for his first amateur boxing match. He’s a “tough, Italian kid” and “a Junior Olympics hopeful,” says his coach Sean Farley. But it’s the final round and Picardi is getting tired. The adrenaline rush he got from the crowd chanting his name is petering off. And his opponent — a left-handed fighter — keeps throwing him off. His moves are the reverse of what Picardi is accustomed to, causing him to slip left to avoid a hit when normally he would slip right.
This southpaw boxing style eventually proves too much for Picardi when he gets duped by a fake jab and receives a “thundery” right hook to the skull.
“He caught me,” Picardi says, describing feeling dizzy and weightless after being hit. “I felt like I was going to pass out.”
As the fight continues, Picardi tries to defend himself, throwing his hands up to his face. But his opponent unleashes a salvo of hooks and uppercuts. The referee intervenes and officially stops the match. Picardi loses on a technical knockout.
“I felt heartbroken because all that hard work leading up to that moment led to you basically getting knocked out.”
The young boxer — standing 5’9 and weighing 152 pounds — fights out of the Haverhill Inner City Boxing Club, a non-profit organization that helps inner-city youths by building confidence and promoting teamwork and respect for authority.
Picardi says the club is like a “second home” where everybody there feels like a brother to me. My coach treats me like a son, so I feel he’s like a second father.”
Picardi says boxing changed his life for the better. It made him realize he was “hanging out with the wrong crowd” and helped him “to get off the streets.”
“We had financial problems growing up and when I was little, my dad was in-and-out of jail and my mom was a single mom,” Picardi says. He adds that his strong commitment to boxing is to make a difference in his life and to help his family.
“My mom works two to three jobs, so I want her to be able to have a nice home and enjoy some luxuries when she’s older. I just want my family’s name to mean something.”
But for all the positive benefits that may come from youth boxing, there are potential dangers associated with the sport.
An estimated 18,000 kids are involved in amateur boxing. In a published statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics strongly opposed boxing for kids under the age of 19 and reported that the risk of acute or chronic brain injury is high.
Unlike other collision sports, such as football or hockey, amateur boxing is won on the basis of the number of clean punches landing successfully on an opponent’s head and body — putting kids at a higher risk of concussions and vulnerable to its long term effects.
“With boxing, there is a greater risk with the younger age,” says Dr. Shaheen Lakhan, a neurologist in Cambridge, Mass and Executive Director of the Global Neuroscience Initiative Foundation and an adjunct professor of neuroscience at Virginia Tech. “The brain is not fully developed.”
Concussions are commonplace in the sweet science. According to research published in the journal Neurology: When one occurs, “a neurochemical reaction begins in the brain cells that cause cell death. The more cells that die, the fewer brain tissue you have … It may explain why people who suffer from head injuries are never quite the same afterward.”
One study conducted by researchers in Australia found that up to 51.6 percent of all amateur boxers sustain a concussion. This makes boxing extremely risky for young participants because their brain is more vulnerable to injury and undergoes a protracted recovery period compared to adults.
“Boxing is quite dangerous particularly in respect to the potential development of neurological injury or brain injury,” says Dr. Lakhan.
“The reason being there is a lot of physical impact to the cranium and its contents including the brain that over time an accumulation can manifest with neurological deficits.”
Dr. Lakhan says that kids and teens are undergoing myelination. A process where the myelin sheath which is a protective shield around the nerve in the brain, is still forming around a nerve to allow nerve impulses to move more quickly. Because the brain is not fully developed, any hard impact that damages the sheath could be detrimental.
“Even after a single blow to the head, you could have signs of neurological injury,” says Dr. Lakhan. He adds when the myelin is damaged, it can affect a young boxer cognitively, resulting in “changes in mood, attention, memory, visual-spatial skills…. also motor functioning, sensations, social relationships, and personality,” says Dr. Lakhan. But Joe Ferguson, owner of the Haverhill Inner City Boxing club, defends the sport.
“Well, you don’t want to see anybody ever get injured,” he says. “It’s safer than other high school sports. They got their headgear on; it’s refereed and it’s very much controlled.”
And the positive rewards of youth boxing can outweigh the risks, Ferguson says, especially for kids who don’t have many opportunities.
When the Haverhill courts sentence juvenile delinquents to community service, they’re given an option to serve out their punishment at the gym.
“Kids come in and think they’re going to be cleaning the toilets or something like that. And instead, they have to work out,” says Ferguson. “The purpose of doing that is to keep them out of gangs and we mentor them and work with them to give them a better life. We start to get in their heads and understand why they do what they do.”
As to how to make the sport safer, there have been a few efforts over the years. A 2016 ruling by the International Boxing Association, or AIBA, banned male Olympic boxers from wearing headgear. They cited evidence that while the protection prevents cuts, the foam padding does little to prevent concussions and knockout blows. It can also increase the likelihood of traumatic head injuries by obstructing the boxer’s view.
For all the benefits Picardi has received from boxing, he does think about the potential drawbacks. “Every boxer thinks about it,” he says. “But you just leave it behind, so it doesn’t distract you. I know what could happen to me, I know that’s the risk of getting into the ring.”
Picardi says his family isn’t 100 percent supportive of him taking up the sport of boxing.
“They see me as a crazy person, honestly,” he says. “They don’t understand why I want to get in the ring and get punched in the face.”
In fact, before his first match, he had a talk with his mom who voiced her concern about him entering the ring. She felt he’d get severely injured if he fought.
“I told her I’ll be fine,” Picardi says. But afterward, he was unable to shake the gnawing feeling. He started to think: Was it really worth it? So, he had a talk with his coach, Sean, who said: “If this is really what you want to do, then do it.”
“Something could catch me and end my boxing career even though it just started,” Picardi acknowledges. Although boxing is more of a backup plan now, preferring instead to be a lawyer.
“Dressing up in suits really caught me. Plus, my mom wants me to have a good job and I think that will make her happy.”