Randy Lopez spent his childhood in and out of juvenile hall, he said. A troubled kid without a father figure, Lopez eventually found stability through boxing, and is bringing that insight to Loveland.
Lopez, currently a corrections officer, is leaving his job to open Loveland Boxing Club, a boxing gym in Loveland, with the express purpose of hosting programs for at-risk youth. The gym will be open to all, he said, and he will teach classes during the day and open the gym up for customers to get a great workout, but evenings, when kids are most at risk of getting in trouble, his focus will be on youth.
Lopez, who has hosted such programs at the YMCA in Longmont for years, eventually outgrew that space, and has now secured a location for a gym of his own in south Loveland, near Loveland Athletics Club.
“I opened up La Familia Boxing Club probably 20 years ago, we’ve had hundreds, maybe thousands of kids go through our program,” Lopez said of his old program, which he operated for free after work. “Our whole goal is to keep as many kids off the street and out of trouble as possible. They’d come to the gym at 5, 5:30, stay until 7, those are the hours where they get in trouble.”
Aside from keeping kids off the streets at particular hours, boxing can help redirect some of the impulses that get them into trouble, he said.
“Boxing can help adults too, but when you talk about kids, they want to be tough, they want to do gangbanging stuff, a lot of kids are attracted to that, right?” he continued. “When you come into a gym, you’re not fighting for a Crip or a Blood, you’re not fighting for red or blue, you’re boxing out of a red corner or a blue corner.”
The gym is planned to open soon, May 1. Classes will be held between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m., with afternoon sessions for kids between 5 and 7:30 p.m. every day.
Lopez teaches his students five principles, all of which he said can help turn a young person on a troubled path around: dedication, commitment, respect, discipline and integrity.
The expectations placed on boxers that fall into these categories, such as the dedication to run three miles every day or the integrity to shake hands with an opponent after a match, can help these students find the maturity to reshape their lives, he said.
It has worked many times. Several of his former students, many without stable home lives, have gone on to become good mothers and fathers themselves, eventually bringing their own children to learn boxing with him.
In one case, this hit close to home.
Lopez had a young student seven years ago, Ashtin Miller, whose father was not in his life and whose mother was struggling with addiction. To add to the uncertainty, his sister was suffering from cancer.
“His mom basically gave up, and she said ‘If anything ever happens, you better take care of my son,’” he remembered. “Most of these kids are from at-risk situations. At-risk is what, single parents, drug related, alcohol related, dad in prison, mom on meth, whatever. All the dysfunction. So I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll definitely take care of him.’ And low and behold, she died. So we adopted him.”
Miller is now 16, still living at home with Lopez and his wife.
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