Walter Fred shows off his footwork at the Nanaimo Boxing Club on April 10, 2024. Fred has been part of Team 700 since 2021, an Indigenous youth boxing team with a focus on physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. (Jordan Davidson/NanaimoNewsNOW)

By Jordan Davidson

team 700

‘Setting them up for success:’ Nanaimo Indigenous youth boxing program reshapes lives

Apr 11, 2024 | 11:35 AM

NANAIMO — A group of Indigenous youth are learning life skills while building their physical, spiritual, and mental well-being through the sport of boxing.

Twenty-year-old Nanaimo resident Walter Fred was a basketball player until the pandemic hit, which forced him to search for a new outlet.

“Basketball was basically taken away from me. One of my buddies was on Team 700 at the time. At the time I was really getting up to no good, and I really needed something to do, because the pandemic was really affecting me.”

Fred has been a part of Team 700 ever since, B.C.’s first competitive Indigenous youth boxing team

He said the training, hard work and discipline learned through Team 700, has improved his life dramatically.

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“It just takes everything out of the gym and it just really made my lifestyle much better outside of the gym…mentally it’s a challenge but it did make me more mentally tough, it made me more physically tough. It just taught me good discipline.”

With one boxing match under his belt so far, Fred plans to continue training and rely on the skills learned with Team 700.

“Even if I’m not on the team, I’m going to do it wherever I can, I’m going to take it everywhere with me.”

Team 700 coach Ivy Richardson started the non-profit Red Girl Rising Movement Society (RGR) in 2019, which provides programming to help build youth resistance and mitigate harms

Richardson, a former amateur boxer, said boxing “is kind of our hook” to get youth engaged through sport, with a focus on their emotional, mental, spiritual, and of course physical health.

“It’s those relationship pieces. We get youth in through boxing and we get to form these great relationships with the youth, and then we get to start identifying ‘what are the gaps in these young people’s lives? What are the needs, what are the wants?’ We really work on setting our youth up to be successful before they even set foot in the gym.”

Ivy Richardson (centre) hopes Team 700, named after the number of youth in government care in the province who age out every year, can help spur meaningful conversations. (Sportchek)

Support can come in a variety of forms through their programs, including helping members with things like housing and food security.

“I have literally sat at schools for multiple weeks on end because school comes first, and that’s all part of it. Working on our education, looking at potential jobs. Identifying what are the needs of our youth, where are the gaps, what do they need support with, so that we’re setting them up for success,” Richardson told NanaimoNewsNOW.

RGR received grant money through Island Health in April, 2023, which Richardson used to hold her second boxing camp for 20 youth last summer on the Tsartlip First Nation on the west side of the Saanich Peninsula, in partnership with the host nation and Boxing BC.

The other part of the grant went to Team 700, formed by Richardson in 2019, who train out of the Nanaimo Boxing Club.

Richardson said a big part of her work with RGR is creating dedicated and accessible wellness spaces, something she said society doesn’t do the best job at.

“Most of the time it’s putting the sign on the door that says ‘Everybody is welcome here’. We’re creating a space for Indigenous youth. It’s not a space where Indigenous youth are welcome, it is their space, it was created for them.”

RGR was one of 29 recipients of a portion of $1.1 million through Island Health’s resilience and safety grants handed out last year.

While they were originally renting the space at the Nanaimo Boxing Club, Richardson took over as co-owner on July 1, 2023, with Team 700 training three times a week in their own dedicated space while also offering public classes for anyone six years of age or older.

Richardson and Team 700 were also the subjects of a feature video produced by Sportchek in 2022.

More information on the Nanaimo Boxing Club can be found here at nanaimoboxingclub.ca.

The ten members of Team 700, pictured here with coach Ivy Richardson (bottom right). (Anna Kawahara, Serene Studio)

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jordan@nanaimonewsnow.com

On Twitter: @JordanDHeyNow