FREEMEN ADD EXTRA PUNCH TO DURHAM’S YOUNG BOXERS
Durham’s Freemen are proving an even bigger hit with young boxing enthusiasts – by repeating a donation first made a year ago to buy key pieces of training kit.
Last November a £300 gift from the freemen’s charitable trust helped Brandon Boxing Club cover costs of a new punch bag and gloves. This month the trustees decided to match their initial generosity, the same amount of money this time going towards coaching pads used to develop punching combinations.
The club has been operating for eight years from a purpose-built gym within the village cricket club’s multi-sports complex.
Boasting 150 members – a third of them female – it caters for a range of youngsters, some starting out as young as five. Two dozen of its leading exponents, most of them teenagers, take part in regular local, regional and national competitions. Among them are juniors Euan 'The Mighty 'Oakes(13) 'Amazing' Grace Kenny (12) 'Hurricane' Harvey Smith (13), and John 'TNT' Dixon (14) who are taking part in the Lord Lonsdale Box Cup, a national event in Penrith this weekend (Friday October 22nd).
“Finding funds to replace worn-out kit is a never ending challenge for any volunteer-led organisation like ours. The generosity of both individual donors and organisations like the freemen are vital to allow us to survive and thrive,” said the club’s competition secretary Alex Oliver, a civil servant awarded a British Empire Medal in 2017 for his services to the sport.
The chairman of the charitable trust, Eric Bulmer, said: “The Freemen are pleased to support a great community project which embraces all age groups and is enthusiastically organised and managed by a dedicated group of volunteers.”
