Jerry Loughran, the owner of Loughran Boxing in London, Ky, held his Back-to-School Extravaganza over the weekend, where he brought in two-time world champion Darren "Schoolboy" Van Horn. Van Horn won the title of IBF Junior, Middle, and Super Middle Weight Champion of the World.
“It’s good for the kids to meet someone who has fought on TV,” Loughran said. “Someone who has fought for multiple world titles. He can tell you what it’s like to walk that aisle as the Nature Boy would say. He can tell them what it’s like to live that way and to travel. He can share that experience with them.”
Loughran feels like Van Horn was the perfect person to bring in to visit the kids.
“Kids magnetize to Darren,” Loughran said. “He brings a lot to the table.”
Van Horn enjoys meeting the kids and talking with them. He remembers when he was a kid and fighters would come to the gym. He feels like it’s his time for him to give back.
“We always had real good fighters who would come to the gym and train us or teach us how to do things,” Van Horn said. “I like to give back, because I don’t want the sport to die.”
Van Horn talked about the way kids change when they get involved in a sport like boxing.
“It changes their life,” he said. “It changes the way they carry themselves, changes their personality. They walk around confident because they know how to take care of themselves.”
Van Horn feels like boxing is also a good way for kids to stay off the streets and off drugs.
“It’s getting so overwhelmingly ridiculous how these kids are just wasting their lives with drugs,” he said. “It’s an epidemic. The gym is a perfect place for them to get away from all that and have something to do.”
Van Horn said that his dad told him when he was 12 years old that he was going to be a world champ, and he was right. Now he has two words for the youth that wonder if they can ever achieve that same goal.
“It’s attainable."
Tim Branstetter
Sports Writer for The Kentucky Daily