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Boxing club celebrates former coach Koch for his 22 years of service

Sep 30, 2011 | 10:38 PM

Although his title was head coach at the Thomas Settee Boxing Club, Braddock Koch did a lot more than that in his 22 years of service, before retiring last year.

Koch was presented with a trophy for appreciation of his services by the club recently, mostly for having tremendous relationships with his boxers and teaching them a lot more than how to jab, hook and block.

“The most rewarding part of boxing really doesn’t have anything to do with boxing,” Koch said. “It has to do with the development of a person… A lot of kids called me like a stern uncle or grandfather. I’ve always said that a coach is less than a priest, more than a bartender.

“In a kid’s life, we’re sometimes counsellors; we step in as family sometimes and play that role. If you’re a coach, it goes with the territory.”

During a recent high school graduation, Koch was invited by a competitor of his and asked to replace her dad during one of the dances. Koch said he was honoured.

“I danced with her in the second dance in place of her father,” said Koch. “She asked me to step in and that was rewarding. That was awesome, there’s no words to explain.”

Koch wasn’t always so warm and kind-hearted on the inside, but then again, it was his tough nature that got him into the sport in the first place.

Even before he strapped on a pair of gloves, or hit a heavy bag, Koch got into his fair share of scraps in his youth.

“When I was 10, I was made a ward of the government,” said Koch. “They intervened and took me out of my family situation. I got in trouble a lot with the authorities and at school—all for fighting.”

Born in Sudbury, ON, Koch was located to a child care centre in Nelson, B.C., when he was 10-years-old and quickly got into the sport there.

“I got started because I was a tough kid, I was in tough circumstances and boxing seemed to be the natural way for me to go,” said Koch, now 51. “This is what they did in my day, I started when I was 10, someone just threw the gloves on me, put me in a ring and away we went. That was my introduction and I liked to fight and in boxing, you could fight and not get in trouble. I kind of liked that.

“I have no illusions that probably, it kept me out of prison,” added Koch. “Not just the idea of being physical and fighting and boxing and all of that stuff but also because my focus changed and I was on training and spending my time at the gym. I would’ve stayed there every day if I could have, I would’ve stayed there in the gym.”

When he was 13, a new coach game into Nelson, ‘Irish’ Tommy Burns and started getting increasingly infatuated with the sport then, he recalls, but wasn’t exactly keen on all the tough work boxing entailed and couldn’t fully commit. After he went into his first tournament in Idaho in 1972 and won gold on his first try at 14, that’s when it started to sink in that he would be doing this for a while.

“That really was the switch for me,” said Koch. “That made me (think) ‘ok, now I’m a boxer.’”

Koch then moved to Prince George, B.C. when he was 15 and came in contact with the person that had the most influence on him as a coach, Harold Mann.

“The thing that Harold taught me the most is that if I wanted something, I had to work for it,” Koch said. “Harold was a very, very old school coach. You didn’t even get in the ring until you earned a place there. You had to earn it by your work on the floor.

“If he asked you for 50 sit-ups, you did 55 or 60. If he said ‘go skip for three rounds,’ you’d skip for five, to prove to him that you belong there and you had to prove, you had to prove yourself. Nothing was given, you had to earn every step of the process. By the time you were a competitor for Harold, you had earned that right. You could call yourself a boxer.”

But most of all, Mann taught Koch how to be the person he is today.

“I was an outsider all my life. We moved a lot when I was a kid. By the time Grade 10 rolled around, I’d already been to 13 schools. I was always the outsider and I always had to prove myself,” said Koch. “I just learned from Harold, I fought a lot on the street, in the ring. It wasn’t until I got a hold of Harold that I learned that there were certain ways you could prove yourself, you didn’t always have to prove yourself with your fists. There were better ways.”

It’s lessons like those, from outside of the ring, which stay with fighters for the rest of their lives.

On Koch’s trophy, current club coach Bob Tichkowsky wrote a short message on it, “I don’t take credit, I owe everything to Brad Koch. He’s a product of God, and the people who made him, the people he came from.”

Koch helped make countless athletes the people they are today, a role he enjoyed and relished. Because after all, sometimes a competitor needs more than a coach; they need a ‘stern grandfather.’

jdandrea@panow.com