AS THE season draws to a close, members of Launceston Amateur Boxing Club’s members are finishing as strong as they started it.

Three Launceston youngsters made the mammoth trip to the other side of the country to compete in the Holland Park Challenge Cup tournament which saw over 150 entries.

The event took place on Saturday, May 25, at the Hassenbrook Academy in Essex with the Launceston boxers bringing back two golds and one silver. All three fought their hearts out and faced very tough opposition over their three 90-second round contests.

Billy Jago faced fellow 11-year-old Billy Gleed from the Eltham club in London. From the opening bell, the Launceston youngster applied his no-nonsense approach, setting a blistering pace working the head and body with impressive combination punching and dominated his opponent for all three rounds to win his gold medal. Club coach Des Charnock said: “It was a fantastic display of skill combined with determination to retain his unbeaten record of four wins from four.”

Tyler Gregory (14) had to dig really deep to put in his best performance to date against a vastly more experienced Jon Ward(13) from the Finchley club. A supreme display of boxing skills followed up with a ‘refuse to lose’ mentality saw him pick up the gold medal with a unanimous points win.

Evan Crabb (12) found himself on bout number 24 and conducted himself with extreme maturity for such a young athlete while waiting for his turn to face another more experienced opponent in Martin Nevin (12) from the Finchley club. Evan gave a brilliant and best performance to date against a very strong and aggressive opponent. A closely fought contest with Evan landing plenty of his southpaw bombs but not enough to impress the judges and lost out to a majority points decision.

Coach Des Charnock added: “I thought we were very unlucky not to pick up the third gold but that’s boxing and we accept the judges decisions.”

Following on from this event saw another two top performances from the Launceston boxers on the Barnstaple ABC show on Saturday night (June 1) in Barnstaple’s Panier Market.

Both boxers gave their all in action-packed contests and both had to work extremely hard to earn their wins. The ever improving Evan Crabb (12) aimed to put his loss behind him from a week earlier and got the nod from the judges with a points win after a very hard-fought and close contest in a rematch over the experienced battler Archie Tape (12) from the Bude Boxing Academy.

Another improver and following on from her success in the recent England v Spain tournament in Barcelona, Carrie Genini (39) applied her relentless pressure, working hard to the head and body against a much bigger opponent and ground out a well-deserved points win over the East Coast ABC’s Jessie Crooks (20).

Coach Des Charnock is delighted with how the club are doing.

He said: “I’m so very proud of all the boxers performances and their behaviour both in and out of the boxing ring. They are all a credit to the Launceston community.”

The final show of the season will see several of the Launceston boxers in action on June 15 at the Swindon Brunel show. The new season will start again on October 1.