Dad's Tough Love Helped Make Boxer Into an Olympian by David Wharton, Los Angeles Times on 08.03.16 Word Count 1,558

Dad's tough love helped make boxer into an Olympian By David Wharton, Los Angeles Times on 08.03.16 Word Count 1,558

U.S. Olympic boxing team member Carlos Balderas hits a bag at his hometown gym in Santa Maria, California, May 19, 2016. Photo: Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/TNS

SANTA MARIA, Calif. — The boxer dances across an empty ring, moving to a beat only he can hear. His punches snap with a grace honed by years of hard work.

All the times he rose early as a boy, running cold streets while classmates watched from a passing school bus, made him quick. All the times he trudged across town, lugging a duffel bag full of gear, made him strong.

Carlos Balderas remembers wanting to skip workouts. "Growing up, I had friends and they always hung out," he says. "My dad made me go to the gym."

His father watches from outside the ring and recalls how a skinny kid grew into a powerful 19-year-old lightweight who will box at the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, next month. Zenon Balderas insists it took a stern hand to bring out the best in Carlos. Yet there is doubt in his voice.

"Was I too tough?" he wonders. "Sometimes I feel bad." This converted warehouse buzzes with young ﬁghters skipping rope and pounding the heavy bags. Carlos -- his arms glistening with sweat -- has the ring to himself. Tears well up in his father's eyes.

Zenon says he pushed his son hard for a reason. He talks about a family that made its way up from Mexico to work the strawberry ﬁelds of Southern California. He talks about surviving.

The grandfather does not speak English; he smiles and waves at visitors who have come to his home on the outskirts of town.

David Balderas, his back bent at 88, his hair gone white, ﬁnally quit working the ﬁelds a few years ago at his family's insistence.

The promise of steady wages drew him north from Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1950s. He settled here for good in the '80s, saving to bring his wife and eight children across the border. When the kids arrived in Santa Maria, Balderas would not enroll them in public school. He pointed to a family down the hall. If you go to school, he explained, you'll end up cholos (street gang members) like them.

His second-youngest son, also named David, says: "I didn't know what cholos were. I thought they were kids who studied together."

The Balderas children helped in the ﬁelds for a year, developing a work ethic and receiving green cards through a 1986 federal immigration reform act. Only then were they allowed to attend classes.

Margarito now works at a winery, and Faustina is a housewife. Norma became an attorney, while Emiliano took over as pastor of a local church.

The younger David struggled in school, but he earned good enough grades to attend University of California, Santa Barbara, where he studied math. He now teaches algebra at Santa Maria High School.

As the baby of the family, Zenon had it even rougher, ﬁghting as a kid and marrying early. He was 16 when his ﬁrst son, Jose, was born. Carlos came along a year later.

His wife left with the boys when they were toddlers. Carlos recalls she often dumped them with relatives.

"We were down in L.A. (Los Angeles)," he says. "Going house to house."

The Balderas home was overﬂowing with a dozen or so bodies squeezed into two bedrooms. Still, Emiliano drove to the city, found his nephews and hauled them back.

"Everybody slept on the ﬂoor," Carlos says. "One blanket each."

Reunited with his sons, Zenon tried to be a good father, but it wasn't easy. Jose and Carlos acted up in school, jumping from their seats and constantly ﬁghting. Their dad and grandfather punished them. "It got to the point where they were hitting me before school," Carlos says. "They'd say, 'I'm hitting you because I know you're going to get in trouble again today.' "

His grandfather took him out to the ﬁelds for a taste of manual labor. Carlos, still in elementary school, had to carry heavy boxes to a truck where the boss punched his ticket.

This hard lesson did not stick. As Carlos and Jose continued ﬁghting -- "We were always so hyper," Jose says -- the family tried something different: boxing.

The owner of a local gym took one look at the brothers, who were 7 and 8, and told them to come back in a few years. But they noticed another boy their age working out.

"That's my grandson," Zenon recalls the owner saying. "He's been training for more than a year."

Zenon proposed a deal: If Carlos defeated the grandson in a bout, his kids got to stay. Jose recalls: "My brother beat him up. Made him cry."

Picnics, birthday parties, barbecues after church -- it seemed that wherever the Balderas family gathered, someone broke out the gloves.

"We loved to box," Zenon says. "Even if we were tired from the ﬁelds."

They knew it was a dangerous sport, that kids could get hurt in the ring, but Zenon became convinced it would help his sons. That is why he made them train every day. That is why he gave them whuppings when they skipped workouts.

"I told myself I needed to do something," he says. "I didn't want them to be the same as me when I was young."

With no one to give them a ride -- and no bus money -- the brothers carried those duffel bags a mile each way, looping the strap over one shoulder, then the other and ﬁnally across their heads.

The family eventually left the gym over an argument. Zenon wanted the boys ﬁghting every month, but the owner thought them too young for so much action. Zenon ﬁnagled a key to a gym 30 miles south in Lompoc.

For the next four years, he trained them every night. When the drive grew too wearisome, he and his brother David cobbled together rent for the warehouse, opened their own gym and invited other kids.

"Look around Santa Maria -- all you see are strawberry ﬁelds and convenience stores," David says. "If you don't go to school, if you keep getting in trouble, you end up working in the ﬁelds or one of those stores. Or you end up in a gang."

If Carlos sometimes bristled at training, there was no doubt about his love for the sport. He began carrying around gloves, challenging classmates and neighborhood kids.

"Little by little," he says, "they didn't want to spar with me anymore."

Home movies show the 7-year-old standing ﬂat-footed in the ring, his oversized shorts making him look puny as he trades shots with an opponent. "Our styles weren't so good," Carlos says.

Quickness and energy carried him at first, until he began learning the nuances of the game. Soon after becoming eligible for official competition at 8, he won his first tournament -- defeating his brother in the final -- and started fighting up and down the coast.

"I was nervous," he says. "A lot of people don't ever get to leave Santa Maria."

Money was a challenge -- the grandfather once had to hock his watch to put food on the table -- but the family found a way to get the brothers to competitions.

Carlos traveled to Alabama for the 2011 Junior Olympic national championships at 15. A gold medal at the Police Athletic League championships in Ohio the next year propelled him to bigger victories and a spot on U.S. teams that competed internationally.

"Carlos was one of those kids always in the ﬁnals, always ﬁghting tough opponents," says Kay Koroma, a resident coach for USA Boxing. "You knew this kid was going to be somebody."

Videotape of a recent bout against a Moroccan ﬁghter shows him moving effortlessly, changing angles, ﬂicking a jab before ducking to fake a body shot. When the other guy covers low, Carlos comes over the top with a knockout punch.

"I like to make my opponents look clumsy," he says.

Last year, he won four of ﬁve bouts on the amateur World Series of Boxing circuit, losing only when he was accidentally head-butted by the top-ranked ﬁghter from Azerbaijan.

Shortly after Thanksgiving, USA Boxing called to inform him that he had accumulated enough points to qualify for Rio -- no need to win the trials. His dad cried.

Was the father too tough on his son? Carlos shrugs and says boxing kept him in high school so he could earn a diploma. It allowed him to travel the world and -- after Rio -- ﬁgures to make him good money when he turns professional with his brother.

"When I was younger, I'd get in trouble for ﬁghting," he says. "Now I get rewarded for it."

After all these years, the father still has his doubts but answers the question with one thought.

"At the end of the day, Carlos is an Olympian," Zenon says. "So something good came of it." The day after a sparring session with pro champion Leo Santa Cruz -- the family pitched in gas money for the drive to Los Angeles -- they keep the workout short.

Strapping a thick pad across his midsection and slipping boxing mitts over each hand, Zenon climbs into the ring. He whispers encouragement as Carlos throws punches, exhaling sharply with each combination. They move around the ring in unison, from one corner to the next, in a waltz they have done together so often. After about 10 minutes, the son lands one more shot, and the father quietly backs away. Quiz

1 Read the selection from the article.

Which of the following conclusions can be drawn from the selection above?

(A) Zenon was more concerned with winning ﬁghts than his sons getting hurt.

(B) Zenon felt that the beneﬁts of boxing outweighed its risks.

(D) Zenon now regrets the harsh trainings his sons endured.

2 Which of the following aspects of the article is NOT thoroughly discussed?

(A) Carlos' training when he was a young boxer

(B) the involvement of Carlos' father and grandfather in his career

(D) Carlos' relationship with his mother

3 According to the article, each of the following has contributed to Carlos' boxing career EXCEPT:

(A) his teachers at school

(B) his grandfather's support

(D) his father's training

4 The author develops the idea that Zenon was inﬂuential in his son's boxing career in each of the following ways EXCEPT:

(A) including statements from Carlos on the subject of his father's training

(B) describing the training routine that Carlos' father implemented

(D) explaining alternative methods that Zenon could have used to train Carlos