By Scott Brinton
He wound up in a corner of the elevated boxing ring. For an instant, he let his hands sway to the outside of his cheeks. Brodsky's opponent, 16-year-old Brent Hardy, spotted the hole in his defense and released a punishing jab.
Pop!
Hardy's glove smacked Brodsky's already battered nose dead-on. Brodsky appeared dazed.
Brodsky and Hardy, two fighters in the Freeport Police Athletic League's boxing program, were sparring hard at PAL's training center on a recent Friday evening. Set between a baseball field and a line of basketball courts, it's a squat, red-and-blue building with decaying asphalt shingles on its roof in Freeport's Northeast Park .
Brodsky, of Merrick, is a sophomore with a 95 average at Kennedy High School in Bellmore. His father, Peter, 58, a retired Nassau County warrant officer and former pro fighter, got his son into boxing. A PAL volunteer for 35 years, Peter is now training Jake. Hardy, of Westbury, is the son of a New York City police detective. He's a student at Holy Trinity High School in Hicksville. He wants to study business in college and own a car dealership.
After getting hit, Jake Brodsky shuffled out of the corner into the center of the ring. He looked tired. He was nursing a virus that gave him a low-grade fever. His shoulders were tight, his back hunched.
His father yelled out, "You've got to think quickness! Quickness is the key!"
Hardy approached, standing erect, ready to pounce. Seemingly out of nowhere, Brodsky unleashed a flurry of rapid jabs to keep his opponent at bay. He slid back half a step and breathed a heavy wheeze.
Within 30 seconds, the electronic timer on the cinder-block wall blared. Round one ended. The two opponents and friends retreated to their corners. Brodsky could rest for a while. For two more rounds, he held his own. He got pounded at times, but he also returned fire. In the end, Brodsky and Hardy embraced in a tight hug, breathing laboriously, sweat dripping down their young faces.
This Saturday, at John's Gym in the Bronx, the 5-foot-10 Brodsky will fight in the Junior Olympics in the 138-pound division. USA Boxing, the governing body that sends amateur American fighters to the Olympic Games, sponsors the Juniors. Win or lose, Brodsky's appearance at the event will represent a triumph of spirit.
Finding himself
Brodsky was born on Long Island and grew up in Bellmore from 1991 to 2000. In 1996, his father ruptured two discs in his neck when a fugitive who was wanted on drug and gun possession charges kicked him down a flight of stairs in a hardscrabble section of Roosevelt. The perpetrator escaped, only to be captured weeks later. After 27 years as a warrant officer attached to the Nassau County Probation Department, Peter Brodsky was unable to perform his duties and was forced to retire. In 2000, midway through his long recovery, he moved his family to West Palm Beach, Fla.
With his father confined to a bed much of the time from 2000 to 2003, Jake started to drift. He never did drugs or get into trouble, but he received little personal attention at his overcrowded school, and his grades plummeted. Thin and small, he was bullied often. Jake said he felt depressed and anxious much of the time.
In 2002, his parents, Peter and Vangela, split up. Jake and his older sister, Chelsea, shuttled between their parents' homes.
"I was just having a really rough time in Florida," said Jake, who spoke politely, dressed in a button-down shirt and neatly pressed jeans for an interview at his Cape Cod home just south of Merrick Road. "I wasn't with any sports. I just wasted my life away."
Jake longed to return to New York, to his roots. So, last June, his parents agreed that he and his sister should move back with their father, this time to Merrick. They started school at Kennedy in September. That's when Peter brought his son to the Freeport PAL gym. Jake had resisted boxing for years, but a voice inside told him that he should at least try it.
At the gym, amid the rhythmic tat-tat-tat of taped fists hitting speed bags and the steady whir of jump ropes swirling through the air, Brodsky found a sense of inner quiet. He looked at himself in the wall-sized mirrors and realized that he wanted to change. He needed to heal his psychic wounds, and to learn how to protect himself from bullies. He wanted to grow up.
"Boxing," he said, "keeps my life in balance. I want to keep my good average, go to college. I'm good with people now that I got all my stuff resolved."
In addition to daily sparring, he also jumps rope, runs three miles and does 200 sit-ups and 100 push-ups. He's gained weight and physical strength while maintaining agility.
PAL, a place for all
Peter Brodsky, a former president of USA Boxing in New York, said the majority of participants in Freeport PAL boxing "come from dysfunctional backgrounds."
The senior Brodsky, who has served as a PAL boxing coach in Freeport and Westbury, said, "Most of these kids are disenfranchised from organized sports. Many aren't big enough to play football or tall enough to play basketball. We take anybody. We're here to help the kids in the entire sphere of their lives."
Joe Higgins, a former Marine and a retired New York City firefighter, is president of Freeport PAL boxing as well as USA Boxing in New York. Higgins, who started the PAL program 10 years ago, lost his brother, Tim, also a city firefighter, in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. After the disaster, Joe Higgins spent months sifting through the toxic dust and rubble that was the World Trade Center until finally recovering his brother's body. Joe later developed pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease, and left the fire department in 2003. Now he devotes much of his time to teaching teenagers how to box and to stay clean. He and a team of three other volunteer coaches, including Peter Brodsky, not only instruct participants in the fine art of the jab, but also keep track of their grades and make sure they're eating enough. (Some come from such poor families that they might skip meals to make ends meet.)
Forty-five young people take part in Freeport PAL boxing, which the Village of Freeport helps fund. The youth group will send eight fighters to the Junior Olympics in the coming weeks. "These kids really have heart," said Higgins, as he sat on the ledge of PAL's boxing ring during a recent Friday practice, with a flat cap hanging over his brow and his thick, tattooed arms resting casually on his knees. "They're just regular kids. Some come from really bad situations. They become a club."
Fifteen-year-old Christopher Rodriguez, an eighth-grader at Dodd Middle School in Freeport, stood nearby. Boxing, Rodriguez said, "is fun. I get to be with my friends and stuff. It's like we make a team. We try to get better."
His buddy, 16-year-old Larry Herrera, a sophomore at Freeport High School, piped in, "It's something to do. You're off the streets. It's better than hanging out. You try your hardest while you're in the gym."
Above all else, Jake Brodsky said, boxing has taught him self-respect. "My friends, my teachers are all, like, why are you doing it? It doesn't hurt while you're in there. You don't think about it. It's not as bad as you would think it would hurt.
"Bullies look for someone they can take advantage of," Brodsky said. "Now no one can take advantage of me. I carry myself like no one can take advantage of me."
The Freeport PAL boxing program is open to any teenager. For more information, log on to www.freeportpal.org, e-mail freeportpal@optonline.net or call (516) 379-5933.
Comments about this story? SBrinton@liherald.com or (516) 569-4000 ext. 203.
