My Mentor

Before I met my mentor I wasn’t the most outgoing student at my school. I didn’t have a lot of confidence in myself about a lot of things happening in my life. I was just an average tall,shy and ambitious guy. After I met my mentor all of my anxieties went away. My relationship with my mentor is that he is my boxing coach. I met the short, funny and arrogant boxing coach the summer going into 9th grade. I had always wanted to box so my dad didn’t feel that I was mature enough to handle the stress of boxing and school. Once my dad felt that I was emotionally mature enough to join the sport it was almost my freshman year of high school. He heard that it was a great boxing gym to go to. The boxing gym was in East Cleveland it was called the Martin Luther King Civic Center. When my dad and I finally went to said gym we were greeted by my coach’s son also named Safo. This also excited the butterflies in my stomach as I was excited yet also nervous to start the sport I have been wanting to do since I was younger. I was so excited to start that I ended up starting to train the first day I sign up. On that very day, he taught me how to do basic moves such as a simple jab and cross combination. I felt like I found I finally found a …show more content…
My coach helped me by teaching me how to box and believing in me when I didn’t. He encouraged me to keep going when I thought I didn’t have the confidence. I was extremely nervous on the night of my first fight, everyone from my gym was winning. I was scheduled to fight last, this put my nerves on the edge. The aphorism that my coach shared with me is “float like butterfly, sting like a bee.” This means to move swiftly a if I were like a butterfly and hit hard as if I was bee like a bee sting. After my first sparring match my coach talked to me about my performance. “You need to be on your toes more.” Safo