THE Jamaica Boxing Board is embarking on a campaign to train more officials locally and across the region, thanks to an allocation of US$300 000 over the next three years from the International Boxing Association (AIBA).

The regional body, the National Boxing Federations of the Caribbean, was allocated US$80 000 for 2018, US$110 000 for 2019, and US$110 000 for 2020. The funds were made available following a presentation by JBB president Stephen Jones and Marco Depersoy from Aruba earlier this year that impressed the AIBA executive.

“The Executive Committee was impressed by the extent to which the Caribbean working group went to give a detailed picture of the challenges the Caribbean region faces in attempting to provide quality boxing programmes for its members as well as the creative steps that they are taking in order to continue to raise the level of boxing and participation in the region,” said the letter sent to the Caribbean over the signature of AIBA interim president Gafur Rahimov.

“The Executive Committee was impressed by the Caribbean’s desire to widen the scope of its programme outreaches to ensure better development of boxers, coaches, referees, and judges, ITOs, ringside doctors and cutmen.

The Executive Committee finds that the presentation for the Caribbean directly aligned with the goals and objectives or AIBA and AMBC.

Now that it has access to the funds, the JBBC said it wants to begin recruitment and training as early as December.

“We are in need of boxing officials in Jamaica and we are starting a programme on that. We are going on a recruitment drive for boxing officials,” said the boxing board’s General Secretary Leroy Brown.

“We are also going into training mode where our current officials are concerned. We are going to be having a couple of seminars and we are hoping that, possibly in December, we will be able to get an official from AIBA, who will come to Jamaica, guide us and test some of our officials so that we can have some more international officials.”

Brown said he is inviting Jamaica’s Caribbean neighbours to send their candidates to the seminars and the testing sessions.

He said that there will also be opportunities for the country’s widening pool of boxers, boosted by the addition of about 150 youngsters who have been training over the past two years under the country’s Fight for Peace programme.

Several fighters from the programme that uses boxing to channel youngsters away from a violent lifestyle will be on show on fight cards on October 6 and November 17 in Kingston and Montego Bay, respectively.

“There are lots of youngsters out there who are going to use this to make themselves better boxers and boxing can make you into a millionaire if you are handled properly,” Brown said.

“Right now we have 150 boxers who have been nurtured and are on the brink of breaking out and making themselves into good boxers, first in Jamaica as amateurs then they move to the professional scene then they go to the national scene, so the horizon is looking great at this moment.” (SportsMax)