Jesus Vasquez Jr. won’t ever forget his bloody-nose humbling. Brothers Jesus Vasquez Jr and Eduardo Vasquez talk at the Denver Police Brotherhood Youth Boxing club on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. Both brothers grew up in the club winning state and national titles. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Po st) Vasquez Jr. had just moved to Denver as a 10-year-old and needed an outlet to get on track. He was getting into fights at school and getting suspended. And the friends he surrounded himself with were already starting to get into gangs and drugs. So when Vasquez Jr. walked into the Denver Police Brotherhood Boxing Gym and got hammered by a couple more experienced kids his age in a sparring session, little did he know then that he had found his outlet — and the venue to fuel it. “I was a troubled kid growing up,” said Vasquez Jr., 34, who is now a professional boxer. “So the Brotherhood Gym, it got me in line. I was able to come in here and let my anger out and release my frustrations that I had from school. “My first sparring session here, I was crying and bleeding, and the other kids were running circles around me. I came in confident — I had done karate, street fighting. But when you get in that ring — when you make the decision to dedicate yourself to the sport in a place like this — it’s different. And this place has been impacting kids’ lives for decades, just like it changed mine.” Vasquez Jr.’s experience is emblematic of the far-reaching effect of the youth program at the Denver Police Brotherhood Boxing Gym. Now in its 30th year operating out of a former church at the corner of Evans Avenue and Bannock Street in south Denver, the non-profit gym backed by the Denver Police Brotherhood union gives local kids a place to learn discipline, hard work and the sport of boxing. It had about 80 kids in its program in 2025. Founded by former Denver police officers C.C. Edwards and Leroy Miller in 1996, the gym is unique in the sense that it’s essentially free. Participants need only a USA Boxing membership, which ranges in cost from $75 to $85 for youth, to join the gym. Several of the gym’s volunteer coaches are former or current Denver police officers, such as Edwards and Zeonnia Parrish, 33. Parrish, who has been involved with the gym for seven years now as a boxer and an assistant coach, says the facility’s gritty environment lends to its influence. Bare bones and minimalistic, it has one boxing ring in its center, surrounded by a handful of heavy bags. Where the church’s altar once was, two speed bags are set up at either end. The walls are covered with the painted faces of boxing legends and motivational quotes, and in the basement is workout equipment that takes you back a few decades: a couple of dated air bikes, a single squat rack, a treadmill and a smattering of mismatched free weights. Parrish says, “When you come in here, you smell hard work, and that’s what I love about it.” “It’s absolutely an old-school ‘Rocky‘ gym,” Parrish said. “You don’t need fancy equipment to get you to where you want to go in this sport. It’s all about the person and the effort that you’re willing to put in, and you can put in just as much effort on the duct-tape bags we have here as you can on a brand-new bag.” The gym’s youth program produced six national champions, two female national medalists, dozens of state/regional champions and a handful of Team USA contenders. But as Edwards emphasizes, the goal of the gym “is to tie boxing into the life of young people.” That’s true for all its members, but especially for those whom Edwards calls the “second chance” youth who come to the gym because of legal issues or recommendations by their school’s administration for remedial intervention. “Once kids show up here, they think they just come in to box,” explained Andrews, who had a 30-year career with the Denver Police Department. “But our main goal is success through education. Boxing is just a way to get them into the gym and give them a place to go and things to do. “Our second-chance kids, some of them have an ankle (monitor) on. But they cannot come in here and talk about their past. Once they walk through that door, their past is behind them, and our aim is to get them away from the people that brought them into that position.” Coach C.C. Edwards watches two boxers spar at Denver Police Brotherhood Youth Boxing club on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post) The gym, which is owned by the union, puts on several annual competitions around the area, sponsors boxers on out-of-state trips to tournaments, and offers scholarships for college-bound boxers. Part of being eligible for that support, and being able to compete for the gym’s youth boxing program in competitions, requires participants to maintain at least a 2.5 GPA. While the union provides consistent backing, the majority of the gym’s approximately $30,000 annual budget comes from donations from individuals and corporations. That makes Edwards, 76, a coach as well as a full-time fundraiser in order to make sure the gym has enough money to support every kid who walks in and wants to put on the gloves. Edwards, a former amateur boxer himself, runs the gym with a father-like presence with a mixture of relatability, tough love and boxing I.Q. “He’s funny, he’s loving, but he can also be a little bit intimidating when he needs to be,” explained Eddie Vasquez, Jesus’ younger brother, who was an accomplished amateur before turning to coaching. “C.C. was my very first coach when I first started boxing. And what I learned from him, I still teach now.” The Vasquez brothers were part of a storied run for the gym about 15 years ago. Eddie and Jesus, one of four future pros on a team that featured current bare knuckle flyweight interim champion Andrew Strode, helped Denver Police Brotherhood Boxing’s youth squad win three straight Golden Gloves team state championships from 2009-11 and five consecutive USA Boxing state tournament titles from 2008-12. Andrew Strode works out in the ring with coach Stephen Blea at the Denver Police Brotherhood Youth Boxing Club on April 7, 2011. (Photo by John Leyba/The Denver Post) “When (opponents) saw the Brotherhood colors at a tournament, they were like, ‘Oh, we’re in a world of trouble,'” laughed Stephen Blea, who was the gym’s head youth coach for 20 years. “When the state tournament posters were made (during that time period), they had all the Brotherhood boxers on there, even our girls. “C.C. would say, ‘Oh my God, they marked us.’ But we always showed up and took care of business. … And the most rewarding part now is to see the life success and (various impressive careers) all of those fighters have gone on to. That’s really what the Brotherhood is all about.” For Strode, like the Vasquez brothers, the pull of the gym never left him even after he turned pro. That was especially the case after Strode’s significant other and young son both died in a car crash in 2022. After that, Strode thought about walking away from boxing altogether. But the time he spent at Edwards’ gym in the months when his grief was the sharpest rekindled his desire to step into the ring. That led him to join the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, where he is 4-0 and could be in line for a shot at the flyweight belt sometime in 2026. “After (they died), I was at a standstill where I didn’t want to fight anymore,” said Strode, who started training at the gym at eight years old with his dad, a Denver police officer. “I was very unmotivated about everything in life. But the door at the gym was always open for me. C.C. knew what I was going through. “So I started training there by myself, because the Brotherhood has always been like my second home. During that time, I figured out what I needed to keep fighting for. It gave me the hunger back, and I wanted to show the kids at the gym and elsewhere in Colorado that you could go through something traumatizing and still come back from it.” While Strode’s journey represents the gym’s past, and Edwards remains its present steward, the gym’s been working on fortifying its future. Corbin Canada shadow boxes at the Denver Police Brotherhood Youth Boxing club on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post) Edwards doesn’t have any national champions currently on his roster, but there are some boxers with promise. One of those is Corbin Canada, a 15-year-old from Parker whom Edwards hopes will make some noise when the 2026 season begins next weekend with the Colorado State Silver Gloves Tournament at A1 Boxing in Aurora. While Canada is “motivated to live up to the bar that past guys have set,” Strode said that when he’s done fighting, he sees himself ringside in the converted church, barking instructions back where his career began. “Coaching is definitely one of the goals I’ve been keeping in mind lately,” Strode said. “I want to be there for the Brotherhood because C.C. and some of the other coaches, they’re getting older. They can’t do this forever. So my generation is going to have to take over and help out the next generation under us, because I want to make sure the Brotherhood is around for decades to come. “It’s too important not to be.” Coach Mike Hewett talks to brothers Nabue and Abraham Daniel at the Denver Police Brotherhood Youth Boxing club on Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. (Photo by AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post) ...read more read less