Mele Pailate (from left), Maggie Grimshaw, Coco Varcoe and Greta Augustine are Giants in the Hawkes Bay boxing world.
By Adam Julian for LockerRoom
A special boxing academy celebrates its 10th birthday – with a strong representation of young women, whose quicker learning than the boys sticks with the coach.
For a long time, no females were allowed to join the Hastings Giants Boxing Academy.
As it celebrates its 10th anniversary, women are now as integral to the gym as the ropes that hold the ring together.
The academy has a proven track record of transforming the lives of those struggling, as well as helping those who want to build genuine self-confidence through boxing.
Renee Doole is as tough and singular as they come. The 18-year-old boxer is a New Zealand youth and junior champion with a 26-3 record.
However, for a long time, she was an outsider – leaving high school at 15 and working at Kmart, New World and as a lifeguard – until she found her true calling. In July, she graduated from the New Zealand Police College.
Her father and son were keen boxers; Doole was sidelined while they sparred at a gym that didn’t allow girls.
That didn’t deter her. She politely hung around, occasionally nagged and then broke the glass ceiling, being bestowed the honour of Hastings Giants Academy Boxer of the Year for the past three years.
“I always wanted to have a fight, kept asking, no one wanted to,” Doole laughs. “When I was trained, the hardest thing was convincing Mum.”
And initially Craig McDougall. The Hastings Giants founder and coach can often be heard barking: “Hit and don’t be hit.”
However, even the 1998 and 2003 New Zealand senior light heavyweight champion couldn’t avoid the growing demand by women to box.
His acclaimed boxing academy, founded in 2015 and originally based in Flaxmere from 2012, had proven a successful recipe for boys in both high-performance and life skills areas.
Police and the former Child, Youth and Family (now Oranga Tamariki) have referred more than two dozen individuals to the academy, which has a track record in assisting youth with exercise training, positive role modelling, leadership skills, goal-setting and, most critically, building genuine self-confidence.
Saili Fiso left behind a life of crime to fashion a 26-6 record and run a barber shop. Andrew Dean Kupa-Caudwell was implicated in a manslaughter case. He served only half his sentence, becoming a boxer and achieving eight wins in 13 fights before starting his own F45 gym.
Ben Randall isn’t from a troubled background, but he applied the lessons of the gym to become head prefect of Karamū High School and is now one of the increasing number of Māori studying medicine in Dunedin.
In 2022, Failauga Failauga worked two jobs to buy a house for his burgeoning Samoan family and was the national senior welterweight champion.
Caleb Lovejoy was “fat and depressed”. He shed 58kg, undergoing a physical and mental transformation that astonished his mother, Leah Lovejoy.
“I wasn’t too keen on boxing at all, but through the role models he’s met on his journey in the gym, he’s gone from a boy totally lacking self-confidence to a self-assured, energetic and determined man,” Leah Lovejoy says.
Caleb Lovejoy is halfway through a degree to become a schoolteacher.
Girls weren’t allowed to be Giants until 2018.
“I grew up with boys, was coached by men and set up the original gym with boys because that’s what I knew,” McDougall explains.
“Along the journey, I discovered that making good men was having a positive impact on the women involved in their lives.
“Society on the whole was changing. Women were taking on more roles and assuming larger responsibilities in all sports. We were receiving calls every week asking if girls could participate and eventually, we had to do it.
“Accepting girls changed the dynamic of the gym straight away. Instead of explaining things to boys several times for a 1% improvement, I was explaining things once to girls for a 98% improvement.”
However, there were issues that needed to be addressed. The Hawke’s Bay Youth Trust, which outlines the vision and implements the Giants’ strategy, didn’t previously have female representation on its board, nor were there any female coaches in the gym.
Trudi Collins, a medical practitioner and mother of three, and Susan Kitson solved that problem.
Additionally, strict rules regarding appropriate attire were introduced to avoid potential “teenage distractions”, including a ban on shirtless boys. On road trips, boys and girls had to be separated while sleeping. McDougall concedes he can be a bit “old-fashioned” and had some misgivings about female boxing in general.
“One of the challenges I faced was a misconception about how women fight,” he says.
“While they were undeniably tough, it often seemed like they were okay with being punched in the face. One would get hit and then the other would retaliate, turning it into a sort of pillow fight. I couldn’t stand that. I believed they didn’t understand the true art of the game: hitting without being hit. This is how I was taught by Grant Scaife and how he learned from Alan Scaife.”
Alan Scaife was known as “Mr Boxing” in the Hutt Valley. He was one of 16 children from Naenae, fighting 107 times and achieving 95 victories without ever being knocked down. In 1953, he became the New Zealand light welterweight champion, and in 1954, he represented New Zealand at the Empire Games in Vancouver.
Beyond his fighting career, Scaife served as a referee, administrator and a dedicated coach. He established the Heretuanga Boxing gym, which has produced 55 New Zealand senior champions. Among these champions was his son, Grant Scaife, who compiled an impressive 68-12 record and later coached his son, Ryan Scaife, to an 87-10 record, including five national titles.
In his own boxing career, McDougall achieved a record of 35 wins and 11 losses, including an Oceania bronze medal in 1998, which came between his two national titles. Unfortunately, a four-year stretch of injury hindered his Olympic Games prospects. McDougall gave it away before it compromised his health to the point of no return. For several years, he was a firefighter doing fitness training on the side, until he threw it all into boxing.
The Scaifes are uncomplicated people with a tried-and-tested method and a gym that looks like something out of Million Dollar Baby, but smells worse. The Scaifes coached females, but they were rare. Doole embraced the Scaife playbook as keenly as anyone.
“Renee has the best straight punch in the gym; she embodies the spirit of one of our theme songs, Can’t Touch This by MC Hammer. She can box at range and is tough, durable and skilled,” McDougall says.
“Her victory over the Fijian No 1 Jasmine Daunakamakama in 2024 was an exhibition in boxing skills. She outboxed a very powerful opponent, avoiding a knockout merchant with total authority.”
The biggest thing Doole has learned is that boxing is scientific. “I like hitting people, but you don’t get very far trying to knock someone out with every punch,” she says.
“My first fight was in October 2021 at the Hawke’s Bay champs. I saw my opponent throwing 100 punches in the warm-up. I tried that in the first round. Not a good idea. I won, but I had to run the rest of the fight.
“I won my first New Zealand title in the 57kg class in 2022. That was amazing. Boxing, like life, isn’t always fair. I had one fight and I was adamant that I won. After I lost, one of the judges told me he’d written the score down wrong.”
Other women making strides in the high-performance space include Maggie Grimshaw, the captain of the New Zealand team at the 2024 Youth Oceania Boxing Championships. A New Zealand junior titleholder, she won gold in Apia to further establish her quality.
Maleta Pailate is 4-0, but rugby appears to be her immediate future. She’s represented the Hawke’s Bay Tui in the Farah Palmer Cup.
Then there are those who head in a different direction, like Michelle Bell Owen.
“She’s an incredible lady who had a dream of becoming a dancer. When she arrived, she did so without a desire to love herself. Despite challenges with anxiety and her weight, she achieved her goal,” McDougall reflects.
Bell Owen has even incorporated elements of boxing into some of her dancing performances.
Others like Nicole Richmond, an electoral apprentice, and Greta Augustine, a recent addition to the Air Force, simply want to give back when they can.
“One of our pillars is ‘Belong, believe, become, service’,” McDougall says. “I’ve found females to be very generous and authentic in giving back, coaching at the gym and nurturing others.”
The academy will mark its 10th anniversary while celebrating its annual awards ceremony on November 24.
This story was originally published at Newsroom.co.nz and is republished with permission.