Hits and Misses

GLENDALE —  He was nearly four times her weight, a dancing taunt of brawn and guile who absorbed the third-grader’s punches as if they were nothing.

Nine-year-old Heather Brusokas, all 60 sweaty pounds of her, kept swinging, though, during her rough-and-tumble sparring match in a church basement gym against a man almost her father’s age--Glendale Police Officer Ron Williams.

Watching at ringside with admiration and amusement, a hard-bitten youth who was no stranger to boxing, 17-year-old Gamlet Asaturyan, muttered approvingly: “She’s fast. She’s good.”

Long the province of males, boxing is becoming increasingly popular among the gentler sex. Police see the ropes and blue-canvassed rings as a safety net that defends against the lure of gangs and drugs.

“There’s definitely more interest in boxing now among girls,” said Williams, 46, who administers the Glendale Youth Boxing Program, whose 30-girl enrollment is among the highest in Southern California.

“Boxing is what draws them here,” said Williams, whose program is licensed by the United States Amateur Boxing Assn. “But once they get here, they focus on what it’s going to take to make them productive members of society, in the home and the community.”

From Las Vegas to Oxnard to Long Beach, youth boxing programs have been seeing more and more girls in the past couple of years and helping to keep them off the streets, Williams said.

In Glendale, where the number of female gang members has surged over the past eight years, police have found that girls have “become the aggressors,” Sgt. Rick Young said, “and we’ve had assaults and fights. They’re taking care of their own matters now, whereas it used to be the boys doing it for them.

“The girls know what’s good jewelry in burglaries, for example, and what’s not. The boys don’t know the difference, and so they take everything,” Young added. “The girls are so neat and tidy about it that [the victims] might not even know they’ve been robbed right away.”

Boxing is an antidote--at least according to Young and Williams.

“People have been asking, ‘Why are we teaching kids to fight?’ ” said Young, whose department sponsors Williams’ program. “And I say that we’re not doing that at all. We’re teaching them not to fight. We’re teaching them discipline and self-reliance and physical-fitness skills.”

Mary Lopez, 14, a freshman at Hoover High School in Glendale, agreed. “I think it’s fun. It’s a great workout,” she said as the sweat ran down her arms and face.

Only moments before, the blood-red practice mitts held by her father, 36-year-old coach Joe Lopez, exploded like rifle shots as Mary threw relentless combinations of jabs and crosses.

Several boys in the gym took notice before getting back to business. One drummed the speed bag. Two others tossed a medicine ball. One began wrapping his hands, readying himself for a sparring match, while two others shadow boxed.

“Dance!” Lopez called out to his daughter as they circled each other. “Dance!”

“Like this?”

“Faster! Fast!” he called back.

The boxing program, which also enlists boys, is held in a gym in the basement of the Glendale Presbyterian Church. Children were present, blending in easily with the wiry teens. So were the girls, eight of them Thursday night and six the night before, their makeup and jewelry replaced by mouthpieces and hand wraps.

“I don’t allow [makeup],” Williams said. “They’re here to work out, to box.”

Trying to collect herself after seeing her daughter spar for the first time, Beverly Brusokas--Heather’s mother--said, “I wasn’t so sure about it at first, but I see now that it’s OK. They really can’t get hurt, with all the stuff they wear.”

In her jet-black protective headgear, baggy red shorts and gloves nearly as large as herself, Heather put up a heroic effort against 6-foot, 205-pound Williams, a longtime boxer who won a gold medal in the 1986 Police Olympics in Irvine.

“It’s technique. It’s not muscle,” said Williams, whose wife and two grown daughters give him a wee bit of insight that helps him relate to the girls in his care.

“I’m impressed with the program,” said Heather’s father, Ronald Brusokas. “The people are good here because they always ask about school studies. Ron’s gotten a lot of them jobs, too. . . . This definitely keeps people off the streets.”

Started in 1993, the Glendale Youth Boxing Program took off, Williams said, when he took over about two years ago, its enrollment increasing to 235 from a handful.

Each newcomer must step into the ring with Williams. He remembered a boy who “couldn’t even last one round with me, he was in such bad shape. . . . In the meantime, here was an 87-pound, 12-year-old girl who sparred with me for four rounds.”