The Birth of the Watertown Area Boxing Club (as told by Johnny Pepe, head coach and President):
“Donna…the history is that the first Watertown Boxing Club started in 1979 at the Jefferson County Children’s Home. It was started by Dan Jones who worked at the home. It was located in the building out in front in the gym. We had over 25 members at each practice. We went to Canada, Massena, and Lowville for boxing competitions. My first amateur boxing show was at J.C.C. in the winter of 1980. Dan Salisbury was a Coach and Dan Jones was head coach….we boxed at the Lewis County Fair in an outside ring…..I moved to Texas in fall of 1982 in Houston… I came back in may 1983….the Watertown Boxing Club was still going on and training but then it slowly dissolved due to some financial issues and coach’s schedules….
The Watertown Boxing Club was at the YWCA during the last part of its career and we had the whole 3rd floor…it was painted blue and we had a room for a boxing ring, a room with mirrors for shadow boxing and a room with heavy bags and double-ender bags…it ended in/around 1984…..
I helped to coach the Watertown Boxing Club when we were at the YWCA for a time with Kevin Oliver and Rick O’Connell in the early 1990’s……
I helped to coach the Lake Ontario Boxing Club with Kevin Oliver and Rick O’Connell at the Madison Barracks for a couple years in the mid 1990’s…….
Fast forward to 2004-2005…I was living on 137 East Division St, Watertown, NY and hung a heavy bag on a tree outside my house…kids were coming out and asking for boxing advice….I got the inspiration to start a boxing program…so wrote a letter to the Watertown Teen Center in 2004…the answer was that it too small to do it when they were at Factory St………
The Watertown Teen Center moved to High St. and they had more room..and room upstairs so I wrote another letter to them and we put the gym upstairs at the Watertown Teen Center on High St…we spent fall 2005 to spring 2006 there…..
We spent some time with no gym and we were training in a cellar for a while, until we moved to 259 J.B. Wise Place. We relocated to Top of the Square in 2021.