Vet­er­an box­ing judge and ref­er­ee, Willie Williams, will put his coach­ing skills to the test when his box­ers Mikhail Ra­goo­nanan and Evan Jack­son en­ter the ring at next week's Na­tion­al Am­a­teur Box­ing Cham­pi­onships.

The event which is host­ed by the T&T Am­a­teur Box­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TTA­BA) and sup­port­ed by the Min­istry of Sport and the Sport Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT), will run from Jan­u­ary 30 to Feb­ru­ary 3, at the Wood­brook Youth Fa­cil­i­ty.

Apt­ly chris­ten­ing his gym Willpow­er Box­ing Gym, Williams has been prepar­ing his charges for noth­ing less than vic­to­ry.

Ra­goo­nanan, cur­rent­ly a fit­ness in­struc­tor, is a for­mer crick­eter who played at youth lev­el and rep­re­sent­ed the North Zone in the schools' crick­et. Opt­ing to ex­change the bat for box­ing gloves three years ago, Ra­goo­nanan made his de­but in 2010, but has com­pet­ed just twice since.

De­spite the lack of com­pe­ti­tion, his coach is con­fi­dent that his trainee will be crowned the wel­ter­weight cham­pi­on while his team­mate, Jack­son, will seek to claim the elite heavy­weight ti­tle. Sport­ing a mean look dur­ing a work­out at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, Jack­son made it known that he in­tends to "clear away all op­po­nents and ob­sta­cles" in his path.

Mean­while, South-East Port-of-Spain Box­ing Gym (SE­POS) will at­tempt to en­dorse its name as for­mer pro­fes­sion­al box­er, David Phillip, leads a five-mem­ber team at the na­tion­al cham­pi­onship. As­sis­tant coach, Michael Alexan­der is con­fi­dent that SE­POS will cop at least two or three medals. Shar­ing that view is the gym's man­ag­er Michael Mor­gan.

"Our gym which is lo­cat­ed at Pic­cadil­ly Street, PoS, has a mem­ber­ship of about 17 stu­dents. Though on­ly five box­ers are com­pet­ing, every­one has been train­ing hard and lend­ing their sup­port. In re­cent com­pe­ti­tions, we reached the se­mi-fi­nals but now we be­lieve we are pre­pared for gold medals," said Mor­gan.

The five-mem­ber team in­cludes two women, Chickere Ed­wards and Lamisha Com­mis­song. Their male coun­ter­parts are Hamil­ton Ed­wards, Thuroin Gar­cia and Nicholas Mon­deroy.

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