His face recessed in the folds of a gray hooded sweat shirt, 17-year-old Shawn Nichol enters the D-Town Boxing Club and shyly introduces himself.
Not a week past his 17th birthday, the 5-foot-5-inch, 119-pound Nichol sports double-pierced ears and wears his black hair floppy on top and buzzed below. He hates math, likes computers and loves to hang out at the mall with his friends – “a typical teenager,” says his mom, Renee Morales, 38.
Until he steps into the ring.
Then Nichol drops his shoulders, lasers his stare and slams his gloves into pads held by trainer Anthony Barela, each blow resonating with a deep boom. It’s as if the laws of physics don’t apply to Nichol’s spare frame, and it’s easy to understand why the two-time Junior Olympics bantamweight national champion dreams of a spot on the U.S. men’s 2008 Olympic boxing team.
“The guy hits like a heavyweight,” says Barela, 40, of the southpaw Nichol, whom the former pro boxer has coached for free since the youth was 9. Three months ago, Barela stopped putting on gloves to spar against his protege, tired of the resulting soreness. “His endurance, his strength – he’s got what it takes to be a world champion.”
For Nichol, a sophomore at Green Mountain High School in Lakewood, the appeal of boxing is its autonomy.
“It’s the one sport I don’t have to depend on a team to help me win,” he says. “I depend on myself and how I train.”
Five days a week, Nichol is up at 6 a.m. to do 200 push-ups and run 4 miles before school. He runs again in the afternoon and ups the mileage to 10 on Saturdays. He says he is at the gym from 6 to 8 p.m. to train and box five days a week, then goes home to do homework until 11 p.m. or midnight, adding another 200 push-ups before bedtime.
Somehow, his family says, his life balances.
“His grades are pretty good,” Morales says. “And the girls love him.”
His parents divorced when Nichol was 4, and he began boxing at age 7 at the urging of his dad, Steve Nichol. The elder Nichol brought his sons to work with him at the 20th Street Recreation Center, where the children met Barela.
“When I was little, I was mean,” the younger Nichol says. “Boxing calmed me down.”
Now he trains at the D-Town gym in the rear of a police station at 851 Santa Fe Drive.
As he spars with another boxer, Barela barks at Nichol to fire his punches faster.
“Pop!” he yells, as Morales’ boyfriend, Ryan O’Neal, nods in approval.
Afterward, Nichol talks about life outside the ring, when he is not a boxer.
“All my friends beat up on me – I let them,” he says with a shrug. “I don’t fight back – they’d take it serious.”
He fought a friend once, an older fellow boxer in training.
“I was giving in, goofing around,” Nichol recalls. “Then, in the third round, I got into it.”
He looks sideways as he tells the story, grimacing slightly at the memory. He won.
“He’s had four knockouts,” Barela says with pride. “It’s unusual, at that age, to have that kind of power.”
Now Barela, a landscaper during the day, hopes to take Nichol and six other D-Town Boxing Club fighters to the Police Athletic League National Championships in California from Sunday through Oct. 9.
The entire club has been raising money for the trip, parking vehicles at events, washing cars and holding a dinner.
Meanwhile, Nichol says he hopes boxing will land him a college scholarship. He watches tapes of Muhammad Ali, studying his footwork. The hardest part of boxing, he says, is staying focused.
“I don’t have that much time to hang out with friends.”
At home, he is teaching his little sisters to box. Fourteen-year-old Jessica hits hard, he says, but 10-year-old Aliyah …
His eyes widen.
“She’s the fighter.”
Staff writer Amy Herdy can be reached at 303-820-1752 or aherdy@denverpost.com.
