60.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Bellmore 17-year-old rolls with the punches
Kellenberg senior taking his best shot at Golden Gloves
Jarred Bonilla is up nearly every morning before the sun rises. The 17-year-old Bellmorite sets out on a 5:30 a.m. run before heading to Kellenberg High School in Uniondale. Following a day of classes, he goes home for a break and then drives to Freeport for three hours of training. That’s Bonilla’s life six days a week, chasing his dream of becoming an elite boxer.
The discipline it takes to commit oneself day in and day out to boxing is not easily taught, said Joe Higgins, the Freeport Police Activity League’s boxing trainer. Few make it long on Higgins’s team. That isn’t the case with Bonilla.
The teen first dabbled in boxing the summer after his freshman year of high school, when an assistant to his father, Town of Hempstead Clerk Mark Bonilla, suggested the sport would be a good fit for him. Jarred joined a gym in Hempstead and was quickly hooked. In search of a stricter workout schedule, he switched to the Freeport gym and threw himself into the ring.
Higgins has limited the number of fights that Bonilla has taken part in so that he can continue to compete at the novice level. Fighting in the 132-pound weight class, Bonilla participated in the Metropolitan Championship Finals last month, only to fall in the final round. In an age group that includes men up to 35, Bonilla faced Alex Valentin, who was more than a decade older. Fighting men that much older requires teenage boxers to be in top physical condition, Higgins said.
“They have to be extremely conditioned; they have to be consistent with their work,” he said.
That includes their schoolwork. To remain an active member of the PAL gym, boxers must pass all of their subjects in school. Higgins said that Bonilla’s good grades are one of his biggest attributes. “His studies are not a distraction to boxing,” he said.
While many of his friends spend nights and weekends having fun, Bonilla has no problem committing all of his free time to boxing. “Freeport’s a good structured gym,” he said. “It’s a lot of time and dedication.”
