Training Kids For Success Through Boxing

By Nik Pharrell | Friday, March 11, 2022

NORTH LAWNDALE, Ill. – Located on Chicago’s west side in a renovated church, a nonprofit called The Bloc Chicago creates a safe space for students.

“This isn’t a boxing gym. It’s a second home,”

Leeinota, a third-grader, said as she walked into the gym, placing her book bag on the bench that use to be part of the church.

Jamyle Cannon, 33, is the Founder and Director of The Bloc, whose mission is to spread the love of boxing by providing resources and opportunities to West Side kids. As students get off the bus and head into the gym, they immediately start putting on boxing gloves, jumping rope, wrapping up their hands for protection in cloth, and shadow sparring.

A student is being taught the proper way to hit heavy bag decorated in blue and black as it rocks back and forth from the left-right combination.

But Cannon, the former Chicago Public School teacher overseeing the gym at 1345 N Karlov Ave., is just as concerned with their boxing technique as he is with the kids’ academics.

Jamyle Cannon teaching Carlos, fifth grader, the proper techniques to defend himself in a ring.

“Hey, Carlos, where we at with that ‘D’ in math?” Cannon asked a student placing his book bag on the table in front of him. “Did we bring that up to an ‘A’ or what?”

“Yes, we did, and I’m so proud of myself, Jamyle,” Carlos, a fifth grader, said as he placed his math book down and began to work.

Cannon believes that it is essential for the kids to have a sense of belonging and support. Many students have a reason to give up on their education on the West side. A lot of the public schools in the area are underfunded.

“When you come up in an underfunded school, you come from a background where you don’t have enough, you deal with violence on a day-to-day basis, you have family members that have been killed, it begins to take its toll,” he said.

“If we want them to see different, we have to teach them differently. Show them how to overcome these things instead of leaving them to figure it out.”

Jamyle Cannon grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, and saw firsthand the inequities in education, which began with the people around him and himself. At the age of 13, after getting into a fight, he got arrested. He believes it stemmed from his internal battle with wanting to feel a part of something and “false confidence.” It wasn’t until he attended the University of Kentucky that he found boxing and realized that it was helping him beyond the physical aspect of staying in shape.

Jamyle Cannon, Founder and Director, punching bag during the tutorial.

“Boxing helped me establish what my triggers were when it came to anger. It taught me problem-solving, and that is something a lot of people don’t recognize about boxing,” Cannon said. “It made me deal with my lack of confidence that I was trying to disguise with arrogance.”

In 2008, Cannon joined the National Collegiate Boxing Association’s Collegiate National Championships tournament, making it to the semifinals before suffering a significant injury, a torn rotator cuff, which ended his placement in the tournaments. Devastated but refusing to give in to his injuries, he trained. Being disciplined and focused, in 2009, Cannon won the NCBA Collegiate National Championship’s welterweight division. This ended up being his last boxing match due to reinjury of the rotator cuff.

After graduation, Cannon spent two years with Teach for America, utilizing his passion and childhood experiences to tackle the issue of education inequality.

In 2012, moving to Chicago with a master’s degree in secondary education, he started working as a teacher at DRW College Prep, 931 S. Homan Ave., a charter school on the city’s violent West Side he helped found.

“There is so much violence in the community,” Cannon said. “When you walk into the school, you can’t just turn that off. It impacts everything from the way you interact with people to your comfort level, wherever you are.”

Students begin their day at The Bloc with a 30-minute jump rope warm-up.

With just 12 students, he started a boxing club, pushing chairs and desks to the side to make space so they could spar in the middle of the classroom. Cannon noticed a change in his hard-to-reach students. They now seemed more open to the idea of learning.

“Kids would come to the club thinking they were going to learn how to fight, but instead learned how to control those impulses, and they did better in school,” he said.

He found that students’ grades, test scores, and behavior in class improved due to the boxing. He figured he had created something special, and this became the foundation for building his nonprofit program, The Bloc Chicago.

The Bloc Chicago is located inside a former church with a professional boxing ring and murals.

“When you have the unconditional acceptance that we offer, when you have the support that we give, you are no longer going out and fighting in the streets."

Since 2016, The Bloc Chicago has helped more than 300 students on the Chicago West Side by providing tutoring and academic help. Cannon partnered with parents to gain access to look at the kids’ grades online, which is checked before every practice. For other kids’ The Bloc is a safe space for them to do their homework.

Students arrive in the educational area of The Bloc facility, where they do their homework and receive one-on-one tutoring.

Cannon said the nonprofit today now works with about 150 elementary and high school students, with fighters in the program having an average GPA of 3.2. They maintain a 100% high school graduation rate among the students who participate in the program at least twice a week for 10-weeks and a 100% college acceptance rate for the Seniors who apply.

“I am proud of creating a space where kids can feel like they belong, and that kind of acceptance helps us push them into higher levels,” Cannon said.

Most of the funding for equipment and snacks is raised through GoFundMe and other fundraisers. With the help of grants from different foundations and donations, Cannon has made The Bloc Chicago his full-time passion.

Fredric Bowen (left) and Tyler Matthews (right) a former member of The Bloc before starting his college boxing career.

Some of his boxers have competed for the Golden Gloves and spots in Team USA boxing.

“The Bloc is more than a boxing club,” said Tyler Matthews, a former member of The Bloc and now boxing trainer embarking on his college boxing career. “It’s not about fighting. It’s about pushing yourself to be the best you can be both inside and outside of the ring.”

Jamyle Cannon (left) given Tyler Matthews (right) some pointers in the ring.

Matthews, National Lewis University student, 2018 Chicago Golden Gloves Champion and 2019 United States Intercollegiate Boxing Champion, said:

“what boxing has taught me is to use my head and not my fists in a conflict,” is the recurring theme for all Bloc members.

“I want my students to know that sometimes life will hit you in the face, but you got to get your hands up and keep fighting,”