The bond between a coach and his athlete is a unique one, very much like a teacher and their student, but in the case of Junior Mint and I, our relationship was so much different than others. I was a foreigner in his country, new to the politics and rules of the sport but both very passionate about the sport and our team. Boxing is an individual sport but at UP we had a team and they were like family to me just like our boxing club was like a second home to me, more so than my apartment here in Korea. When Junior Mint first approached me about turning pro, I told him I'd do it on two conditions.
My conditions:
1. He give me the spare key to the boxing club so I could train whenever I wanted.
2. He don't go easy on me because I'm a girl -- he be brutally honest and train me hard.
When I passed my pro test, I got the spare key and he upped his toughness on me. Anyone who knows anything about Koreans knows that they go hardcore with what they do and Junior Mint expected me to do the same with my boxing. I was working as a professor at a local university but it was rough juggling my full time hours of teaching with Junior Mint's training demands whenever I had a scheduled fight coming up. Early morning runs on the mountain followed by late evenings of boxing, sparring and weight training at the boxing club after an already grueling day of standing for hours in heels teaching. He used to threaten to make me walk home from a bout if I lost and I remember once he yelled at me after a match. I had won the match and even had broken my opponent's nose, but Junior Mint was ticked, claiming I hadn't listened to him and had dropped my guard too many times. At this particular bout, I was being filmed for a documentary Arirang TV was doing on me so it was a very public, super humbling experience.
Any and every emotion you could quite possibly feel with and for a coach, I've felt it with Junior Mint, with the exception of romantic feelings that is. There were days when he just drove me completely bonkers at training, like the time I puked in my mouth guard during sparring. He made me go two extra rounds and then do pad work. I remember yelling at him, was all in tears, and he told me if I couldn't hack it then maybe I should go home. I stayed. But then there were those days when I'd feel so completely thankful for him, so proud to be his boxer. There'd be days where I'd leave training on such a high and, as I left the club, I'd yell back to him "I love you!". I remember when I was training for my championship match. After a very grueling sparring match of 6 rounds -- 3 rounds each with two different male sparring partners -- he turned to me, leaned in and asked, "What are you going to do when you become champion?" I told him I was going to buy his boxing club from him. He's never been one to hold back what he honestly thought so him asking me that, the way he asked me such a question, felt amazing.
I never ever imagined our relationship, he as my coach and mentor, would ever end. It seemed to only get stronger with the years and after 6 years of training together, I had added so many additional labels to him up and beyond him just being a coach. He was the first person I told when I got my job at Dankook, the person I confided in when I broke up with Q, and the person who first saw a spark fly between Snickers and I. He had become family.
I am still very much heartbroken from my last conversation with him, back in December 2012, when Snickers and I told him we were going to start our own boxing club. I didn't expect him to be excited for us but I didn't expect him to totally disown me.
Junior Mint helped bring me into the life I now live and I will forever be grateful to him. I miss heading into the club and finding him sleeping in the ring. I'd throw my stinky handwraps at him -- he always complained about them -- and I'd forget my socks so I'd have to wear his. I miss our silly inside jokes, venting about this person or that person, and talking about how we both are anti-kids. He'd try to pretend it was me who tooted during padwork and then I'd try to purposely miss the pad and hit him instead.
Tomorrow will mark the third time I will have run into Junior Mint in a public setting -- a live fight -- and I'm anticipating it to go down just like the other two times. Snickers will say hi to Junior Mint, he'll shake Snickers' hand and then he'll look past me as if I didn't even exist.
It's a harsh reality. His club is ten minutes down the road but we're so far from where we used to be. I miss him every single day.
No comments:
Post a Comment