sport
GOLDEN GLOVES The nation’s best amateur boxers will descend upon Salt Lake City May 16-21 for the 2016 Golden Gloves National Tournament of Champions. Held at the Salt Palace Convention Center, the tournament will feature more than 300 top boxers in 10 weight divisions. rockymountaingolden gloves.com.
benefitted her in many ways. She’s opening doors for herself that she doesn’t even realize right now.” One of those doors is to college—the oncedelinquent Maya is now a straight-A student applying to attend the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. After winning her first championship belt in 2015, Maya also set her sights on competing in the Olympic Games one day. “I love boxing,” says Maya. “It’s opened my eyes to a better life.”
RACE SAWYER
The first time a button popped off Race Sawyer’s pants, he shrugged it off as a manufacturing defect. The second time it happened, on a different pair of pants three days later, Sawyer took a look in the mirror. “Hello, 30!” he laughs, “and goodbye, metabolism!”
Race Sawyer
Once upon a time, the West Jordan native was a state champion wrestler and specimen of fitness, but those days were long gone. “I got back from my mission, got married and started making babies,” Sawyer says of his twenties, which gave way to long days working as a sales team manager for Alliance Health. At night, Sawyer had a busy family life, with wife, three children and a revolving door as a foster parent to troubled kids. His lifestyle, which Sawyer calls “intense but rewarding,” leaves little time for exercise. But Sawyer’s expanding waistline signaled a need for change. He signed up for lessons at Factum Boxing with coach Tim Carroll. After several weeks of training, Sawyer was thrust into the ring for his first bout. Though he was defeated, Sawyer was hooked. “I had to get better,” he recalls. “It became a passion.” In the next 12 months, Sawyer improved tremendously, with six wins in eight bouts under his (much looser) belt. The emotional benefits of the sport, however, have been more profound than physical transformation. Instead of feeling overwhelmed by the demands of life, boxing brings clarity: “Most people don’t understand why getting punched in the face is fun for me. But when the pressures of life, work and relationships weigh me down, I get in the ring. I always come out with a better attitude.”
DAVE MARIO RAMOS & KIMBERLY ANN DEBRY
MOST PEOPLE DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY GETTING PUNCHED IN THE FACE IS FUN FOR ME. - RACE SAWYER 46
S A LT L A K E M A G A Z I N E . C O M M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 6
PHOTO: ADAM FINKLE
Every evening, 50 youth, ages 4 to 19, congregate inside a nondescript brick warehouse off State Street, where they wrap their hands in tape and get to work on a row of punching bags. There is no whining, no horseplay and definitely no talking back to the owner, Dave Mario Ramos. This is not out of fear, but respect—Ramos is a surrogate father to these youth from troubled backgrounds.