Christopher DeRosa's Boxing Club Returns to Hill Street, This Time With Southampton Students in Tow

One of the things that Christopher DeRosa didn’t want to get lost as he moved from being a social worker from his hometown Hampton Bays School District to the neighboring Southampton School District was his beloved boxing club at nearby Hill Street Boxing.

The program focuses on the “triangle,” as DeRosa puts it, of mental/emotional, physical and social health and helps students make connections with peers who maybe they wouldn’t have met or known about if it wasn’t for the club.

Not only did DeRosa get to pick the program back up at Southampton, but it has thrived. Capped at 42 students currently — the most students DeRosa had at Hampton Bays was in the 30s — the program started back up at Hill Street on January 6 and will continue every Friday through the end of March.

The club meets in a classroom setting first directly after school at 2:30 p.m., when students meet and are paired up with someone and asked to share personal things to learn about each other. Then, from 3:15 to about 4:30 p.m., all of the students are bused to Hill Street Boxing, where they can take part in a physical workout, which includes simple workouts from running on a treadmill, to harder exercises, such as pushing a weight sled, and also learning correct boxing techniques from lead trainer and manager Avery Crocker, a Southampton High School graduate himself.

“We have this amazing mental health team at Southampton of Arlette Flores, Avni Patel, among others, who are teaching the kids about mental health and how it’s really this triangle — physical, mental/emotional and social — and this club here encompasses all three of those,” DeRosa explained. “We partner up as a group, share personal things with each other and actually take the time to sit and learn about someone we don’t know. Like the first day, we talked about our families and culture and how different our traditions are and the similarities. And so for the first 45 minutes or so, we do that and then we come here and box it out.

“This was something when I first came here I was very passionate about just because the success that we had at Hampton Bays and what it did for our kids,” he continued. “As I’ve said, the makeup here is amazing. We’ve got all different groups coming together.”

DeRosa said after talking to Southampton Athletic Director Darren Phillips, high school principal Brian Zahn and superintendent Dr. Nicholas Dyno, who all gave him the green light to start the program back up with their students and athletes, they returned to Hill Street in the new year.

“They made it happen. If it wasn’t for Darren or Brian or Nick, this wouldn’t have happened, so I’m very thankful for them being very supportive,” he said. “They see the benefits of having another outlet for our kids. They see that the kids like this high-risk activity, but they’re also getting the social/emotional support. Before we come here, we’re connecting with different students, and that’s how it works.”

A big difference between the club when it was at Hampton Bays to now at Southampton, is that it has captains. DeRosa chose junior Chris Atancuri and senior Brandon Perez as the club’s very first captains due to their passion in the sport of boxing.

“I had two kids so passionate about this who were working in boxing well before they heard about the club. We’d talk about hooks and jabs and about technique. Chris and Brandon, they’ve just been amazing,” he said. “They’re going out, reaching out to the kids. We have some kids who only speak Spanish and some kids who only speak English, and Brandon and Chris are both bilingual, so they bring that to the fold as well, bringing everyone together, which is really awesome. Their energy and their spirit is contagious. They’re those kids where if they’re up in front having a good time then everyone is having a great time. And they’re just great leaders who lead by example, always in the front, always working on their craft, and they’re exactly how we feel our kids can be like when it comes to maturity and things like that.”

Perez, who plays soccer in the fall and runs track in the winter and spring, said he had always felt a stronger connection to boxing and couldn’t have been happier when he was named co-captain of the club.

“To have a leadership role with someone who I respect as much as I do DeRosa, it was like a dream come true,” being named captain, he said.

Perez said that what he appreciates the most about the club is that the physical part of boxing is about the last thing that is taught. It’s more about the mental, social and emotional part of the sport.

“Every time we meet up, we have these social icebreakers where we pair up with someone new, make sure all of us know everyone’s names, their siblings, and that makes us feel like more of a family, it feels like it’s much more than just boxing, and that’s the magic of this club,” he explained. “And that’s the main goal of our program at the high school, to show people that boxing can bring people together.

“We also have a very diverse group of people, in terms of cultures and grades, so it’s very inclusive,” he said. “We have seniors, juniors, sophomores and even freshmen too so it’s an amazing group to work with, and everyone keeps coming back. You have clubs where people come maybe one time and that’s it, but everyone keeps coming back every week.”

The program also has a good mix of both boys and girls. Vanessa Reyes and Jeorgiana Gavalas both had nothing but good things to say about the program last Friday.

“I think it’s great. We’ve never had anything like it before at Southampton,” Reyes said. “DeRosa came in and made such a great connection with the students and then brought us here and we’ve been able to connect with everyone with boxing. It brings out a lot of different people in our school community so it’s really nice seeing everyone come together.”

Gavalas, a varsity cross country and track runner, said she appreciates the cross training that’s involved in each class, with a number of different stations set up. Reyes said her favorite part is the upbeat atmosphere at Hill Street that gets everyone going.

“The support of the people and the staff here are amazing,” Reyes said.

“They really push you,” Gavalas added.

The boxing club only goes through the end of March, DeRosa said, but once the kids start to attend classes at Hill Street, they tend to go to classes there on their own, which is even better for them, he said, because they get to connect with the community even more.

“It’s one of the my favorite things,” DeRosa said. “That first day, everyone was kind of nervous because they don’t know everyone that’s there. They know a few people, and then by the end, have a slow build of social/emotional activities, as we peel back the onion then they start to learn about each other. Instead of their differences, they start to see the things they have in common. And just because they haven’t spoken before, they may not be in classes together, doesn’t mean they can’t be good friends. That’s what’s really special for me and Ms. [Vanessa] Lopez here, to see all of our kids coming together, making new connections and new friendships.”