SYRACUSE -- The kids who train at the Westside Athletic and Education Center learn more than how to become a better boxer. They learn how to become a better person.
Legendary boxing trainer Ray Rinaldi has coached boxing in Syracuse for over 50 years. His gym on Geddes Street has trained over 1,500 kids in the past four years. Some of them are at-risk kids who are used to living violent lives on the streets. Rinaldi tries to change that.
"You get that discipline and then they start changing," Rinaldi says. "The kid is so beautiful that in three or four weeks the kids you were talking to, he changed 100 percent."
One youth who has benefitted from the program is Jimmy Garcia. He says his life was going nowhere before he stepped in the gym. "I dropped out of school and all that. Chillin' in the street from morning 'till night," Garcia says. "Ever since I've been here, now I start going to college."
Garcia is studying to become a police officer at Onondaga Community College.
Rinaldi says his gym is suffering from funding problems. He says he hopes local government and the community will lend a hand for a gym that has meant so much to the area's youth.
