At three in the morning, five young fighters from West Auckland Amateur Boxing Club climbed into a car and headed for the airport, writes volunteer community journalist, Henri Birkholz.
Their destination: an international boxing tournament in Portugal, against clubs from across Europe. “Who’s heard of West Auckland in the world?” says Stephen Nicholson, who founded the club and paid for the trip himself. “Nobody.”
He might need to update that.
Spit and sawdust
The gym Nicholson built is, as he puts it, “spit and sawdust” — nothing fancy, entirely self-funded by a local businessman who grew up in West Auckland and wanted to give something back.
He bought the derelict community centre during lockdown in 2020 and has taken no council or government funding since. Ernest Bowart, a coach with 42 years experience in England Boxing who has been with Stephen from the start, sums up the arrangement plainly. “We don’t get paid. All we do is put our life back into the boxing.”
“Let’s go back,” said Ernest after the club’s second trip to Portugal. “Let’s have another go at internationals.” This May they did, for the third consecutive year — five West Auckland fighters heading to the Portimão Box Cup, one of Europe’s larger amateur tournaments drawing clubs from Romania, Spain, France and beyond.
“There’s about 800 boxers from all around the world,” says Stephen’s son, Thomas Nicholson. “You see things you’ve never seen before. It’s breathtaking.”
A different world
For Levi Smart, the trip to Portugal was more than a boxing tournament. The 14-year-old had never been abroad before. “That young boy has never left Bishop Auckland. He’s lived around here all his life,” says Stephen.
Levi found himself in a different world. “The atmosphere was just a lot more lively,” he says. It was a feeling shared across the squad. Thomas, Stephen’s 16-year-old son and one of the club’s fighters, puts the group’s bond simply: “We’re all like brothers.”
“Since last year, all I’d done was train.” Twelve months earlier, Thomas had been stopped in the first round of his Portimão final by a Russian opponent and went home to West Auckland with one thing on his mind.
This May, at the same tournament, he got his chance. “There’s a lot of past history with that fight,” he says. “They beat me last year. I just went for revenge — and I got it.” Thomas won the bout decisively. His father watched from the corner. “I was over the moon,” he says.
Reach
The results, though, are only part of what Stephen is building. The club’s reach extends well beyond the ring. Boxing, with its demands on diet and self-discipline, has a way of reaching people that other things don’t.
One senior member arrived at the club overweight and caught in habits that were doing him damage. Through training he shed nearly twenty kilos and stopped drinking and smoking. He is now a regional champion. “If I can make one young person’s life good,” says Nicholson, “then I’ve done my job in life.”
Portimão is not the end. Nicholson has his eyes on Malta, Germany and, eventually, America. “We will take West Auckland around the world if we can,” he says. Thomas, who has watched his father build all of this from nothing, knows what it means. “My dad started this from zero, now we’re flying the flag.”
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Henri Birkholz
South West Durham News covering news across County Durham.
