Friday's semifinals of the Upper Midwest Golden Gloves tournament featured fighters from around the region, some celebrated with impressive amateur records and others relatively unknown.
But for some of the pugilists at the tournament that precedes the national Golden Gloves in May, just competing Friday was an accomplishment.
Javontae Starks, a 19-year-old from Minneapolis, was celebrating with friends at a high school graduation party in Minneapolis last August when a group of guys began shooting and hit random people. One of the bullets struck Starks in the stomach, a few inches away from a major artery -- and from derailing his promising career.
"It was a scary thought," Starks said.
But two months later, Starks was back in the squared circle, savoring the sweet science. And a few weeks ago, he won the 2008 U.S Future Stars National Championships in Colorado Springs, Colo., and earned an opportunity to represent his country in global competition as one of its best amateur fighters. He leaves Sunday to begin training for dual meets against Russia and the Dominican Republic.
Starks defeated an alternate for the U.S. Olympic boxing team to earn his crown.
"I wasn't supposed to win that fight," he said, referring to the way he overcame the favored opponent. The same could be said of his rapid recovery.
Even his father and trainer, Sankara Frazier, was surprised by his son's determination to return so quickly to boxing. "He bounced back pretty good from that," he said. "He's that resilient."
