JASTER’S JABBERINGS: Pearson closing up Boxe Neepawa, says it will be back in future

Opinion

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This article was published 01/05/2018 (2698 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After four years of working almost non-stop, Derek Pearson is taking a break.

He taught his final class at Boxe Neepawa last week, the equipment was moved from the club’s Hamilton Street location in Neepawa on the weekend and the doors closed on the combat sports club on Monday. Pearson, the not-for-profit club’s founder and coach, thought this was the perfect time for the Boxe Neepawa to take a hiatus for the summer, especially since numbers usually drop during the spring as athletes focus on minor sports.

The break will allow him to re-energize himself — Pearson was teaching 25 classes a week while also working as the marketing director, trainer and dryland trainer for the Manitoba Junior Hockey League’s Neepawa Natives — and take care of a few things he’d like to do with the club.

First and foremost is finding a new home.

“The facility we had was not designed for a boxing club, it was a retail clothing store initially,” Pearson said. “It’s quite old and a heritage building so there’s floods and leaks. It’s comes down to a building that will serve our needs.

“I know there’s enough people who will come back, but I think we just need to scale it down a little bit. I’ve been using the term that we’ve become a bit like a YMCA where they come in and train. We’ve had fitness equipment donated to us that we didn’t necessarily need, but we had the space so we accepted it. A lot of it didn’t get used because people wanted to hit bags and roll on the matts and do martial arts. When we do come back, it will be a martial arts club more than a fitness club and a dryland stuff will be a separate program entirely.”

Previously Boxe Neepawa, which opened in February 2014, served as a place for dryland training for sports teams, like the Natives, as well as martial arts and fitness classes.

The club’s focus was on combat sports that could turn people into mixed martial artists, but since there aren’t MMA competitions in the province, most athlete would compete in different events, like boxing and jiujitsu.

Membership numbers peaked at 50, which Pearson was impressed with for a community of less than 5,000 and since people often train for a bit and then take a break. The numbers are closer to 25 to 30 now, with a few coming from outside of Neepawa.

The problem with the numbers is that most of the athletes are the same age and will be heading off to university in the fall, so he’s told them of different clubs in Brandon they can train at this summer for when some come to the Wheat City for their education in the fall.

MMA and combat sports are open year-round for training, but Pearson doesn’t think the region will lose too much with Boxe Neepawa shutting down for a while. He also has a new plan for when the doors reopen at a new location.

“For the first time in four years, we’re going to have an off-season and take the spring and summer off and regroup as more of a competitive side of things in the fall,” he said. “Right now we do a lot of recreational classes. We’ll probably do away with that for the most part and focus on competitive athletes.”

Pearson will continue to work with some members of his club this summer as well. Equipment that was donated to the club was donated to other places in town. Equipment that was purchased, such as the boxing ring, are coming home with him. The ring will be set up in Pearson’s backyard and other equipment will be in his garage so he can continue to work with select athletes.

One thing Pearson is taking pride in is working with athletes who have come from over 10 different countries in the past four years.

“That was something that caught me off guard with how many people from all over that I’ve had a chance to work with,” he said. “That’s something I’ll take away as my biggest accomplishment is introducing the sport of boxing and mixed martial arts to literally hundreds of people who have come through there.”