Sponsorships sought for promising young boxers

Among the promising young boxers at the Tacoma Boxing Club, six in particular have earned their way to be top contenders in the sport. Now efforts are underway to secure sponsors to help these fighters go the distance and achieve their dreams.     

 

The boxers that Tacoma Boxing Club head coach Tom Mustin has his eye on are Dedrick Crocklem, Jermaine Carrillo, Romeo Johnson, Eugene Washington III, Arturo Cuevas and Jerice Holland.

 

“Those are the guys I’m seriously trying to push and get them to box the way I know they have to box and get them in the shape they have to be in to make a splash in the nationals that are coming up,” Mustin said.

 

It takes funding for these boxers to travel to competitions and tournaments. That Golden Gloves is a state and federal non-profit 501c3 means that contributions would be tax deductible for any company, organization or individual to sponsor a championship or match. 

 

A former USA Boxing Olympic coach, Mustin works closely with each of these boxers to train them in the knowledge and skills they need to be at the top of their game. Some of them he has worked with since they were children, so he knows their potential to do great things in the ring. He has enlisted the help of a grant writer to secure funding to back them in their boxing journey, and he’s hoping that sponsors will step forward as well for these deserving young men. 

 

Carrillo, 125 pounds, has been under Mustin’s wing for years. “He’s been boxing for me since he was eight or nine years old,” Mustin said. Carrillo and Crocklem both will be graduating from Lincoln High School this spring, and turning 18 will open up opportunities for them as elite class boxers for competitions including the Golden Gloves regionals in Las Vegas next year. 

 

Johnson’s latest win was earlier this month in Portland at Rip City Boxing’s 5^th Annual Red Shield Fall Classic Tournament. Holland won a belt at the tournament as well, and Crocklem fought in two days of bouts to take home the top prize belt for the tournament. Cuevas, 15 years old, is a past winner of the Silver Gloves nationals in Missouri.

 

“He’s a good boxer. We call him Big Shot because he hits so hard,” Mustin said about Cuevas.

At 26 years old, Washington has been in the sport since the early 2000s. Mustin coached Washington’s dad back in the day, and Olympic boxing legend and Golden Gloves ring announcer Leo Randolph said Washington III can be a champion in his own right.

 

“His dad was a good boxer so he grew up in that. He’s got boxing in his blood, you could say,” Randolph said. 

 

He praised Crocklem as well for his outstanding dedication and determination. 

 

“He has a personal drive that I know it takes to get what he’s trying to achieve,” Randolph said. “It’s an inner drive where you can get up and work out when everybody else doesn’t want to work out; training those extra hours and working out in the gym when you know the coach is not watching you… He has all it takes to be the champion of the world in amateur and professional.” 

 

Tacoma Boxing Club head coach Tom Mustin.

This week, the Tacoma Weekly caught up with Crocklem as he was heading out of town to Team USA’s Olympic youth training center in Colorado Springs. This is his third time to train at the center at this level, then he travels to Spain for the under-19 world championships. 

 

As a national champion, 139-pound Crocklem is a standout fighter. He was the chosen Golden Boy at the 2022 Golden Gloves event last June and his name was announced at the Red Shield Classic a few weeks ago for a wild card spot in the upcoming Olympic trials. 

 

“Me and a whole bunch of people from USA Boxing will be fighting in the national league against other countries for gold medals,” Crocklem said, looking forward to his first time to travel overseas. He’s looking forward to graduating from Lincoln too so that he can pursue his boxing dreams “and to be a good role model to the youth,” he said.

 

“As soon as I graduate, I’ll be competing to go to the 2024 Olympics and after that, I will be going pro within the next year. My ultimate goal is to go to the 2024 Olympics, win gold at 139, then turn pro within that next year and become a five-division champion in five different weight classes.”

 

Crocklem has been boxing since was about nine years old. Back then, he tended to get into fights at school and it landed him in big trouble one day. 

 

“My mom told my uncle about it and he told me if I’m stupid enough to get put in jail for fighting, I could do boxing. The next morning, he took me to the gym. I went home and told my mom I really wanted to do this sport and she said if I get my reading level up at school, she’d put me in boxing and my whole attitude changed at school. I started doing excellent and I’ve been in boxing ever since then.” 

 

Mark your calendars now for the 74^th Annual Golden Gloves 2023. Preliminaries are Jan. 27 at the Edison Annex (3109 S. 60^th St.) and finals are Jan. 28 at the University of Puget Sound Fieldhouse. Stay up to date at facebook.com/goldenglovestacoma.