Latest update January 20th, 2025 4:00 AM
Long Island Amateur boxing Championships underway
Guyanese Michael Carryl in the forefront
The third annual Long Island Amateur Boxing Championships began Thursday at Five Towns Community Center in Lawrence, and concludes today.
The three-day event, sanctioned by USA Boxing Metro and organized by Long Island Amateur Boxing Championships Charities, features 270 fighters from across the country, men, women, boys and girls ranging from 9 to 46 years old, competing for titles in the flyweight through super heavyweight divisions.
The tournament followed a sudden-death, single elimination format, with boxers competing in no more than one bout each day.
Michael Carryl, tournament director and a former boxer, said he hopes the event can boost boxing’s presence in the area. “It helps the gyms in Long Island.
It helps boxing in the smaller gyms to have their boxers who are training so hard to have a very important tournament to attend in their own backyard,” Carryl said.
“They can be proud of something special. This is a Long Island affair that they can be proud of as champions.”
Lending more excitement to the event are two prominent area fighters, Tor Hamer and Shemuel Pagan, who will compete in the tournament.
Hamer, 25, won the event last year and will look to repeat his performance in the super heavyweight division. He is also the 2008 National Golden Gloves champion in the super heavyweight division.
Pagan, 20, an alternate for the 2008 U.S. Olympic boxing team, will compete in the featherweight division.
Both boxers, Carryl said, will help the tournament grow and appeal to more fighters in the area.
“It’s significant that we’re doing things right,” Carryl said. “These two individuals, one an alternate on the Olympic team and the other one being number one [amateur] in the country, it says something about what we’re doing.”
(Katie Strang/Newsday.com)
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