TURNING M BOXING INTO A WOMEN’S WORLD + HER H L EE SA SL O TH NS
ove over, men! Reese Scott is here to prove that fitness is a woman’s world! Raised in New Jersey’s suburbs, Scott, is a registered amateur fighter and licensed USA boxing coach. Previously a heavyweight champ, boxing trainer and on-set boxing consultant, the 47-year-old has trained over 1,000 women and girls in her mission to open New York’s first “real deal” women’s boxing gym. In 2007, Scott’s dream became a reality when she founded the Women’s World of Boxing Club. The club is based in New York City’s East Harlem and provides annual boxing programs for teen girls while offering women and girls a safe, comfortable, uplifting and empowering space to train at both competitive and non-competitive levels.
CLAIMING HER SPACE
Reese Scott’s Journey from Gym Janitor to the Owner of a Women’s Boxing Club Reese Scott, Reebok Campaign photo credit/ Zoe Grossman
BY PIERA VAN DE WIEL
38 HERS Mag azi n e | H ER H ealth
Scott initially took up boxing while she was battling depression. Boxing was a special hobby that made her feel stronger and livelier. Pleased with the outcome of adopting the pastime, she decided to leave her career in publishing and build a new brand for herself as a boxing coach. While the pro boxer’s road to becoming the success that she is today may appear to have been smooth, it certainly came with its challenges. Because boxing is a male-dominated profession, there would never be any women in the gym while Scott was training, which often left her fighting for her right to be there. She recalled a time when a man attempted to use her bag even though there were ten empty bags in the gym— something she felt was a chauvinistic rouse to oust her. “The men just wanted to use my bag,” Scott said. However, the female boxer felt that she needed to claim her spot in the predominately male industry. “I was there for me, [so] I can do anything I want,” she asserted. Upon this realization, Scott knew that she wanted to share her mindset and skillset with other women. She began teaching a pro bono boxing class and, slowly but surely, it developed into a business. To learn more about the world of boxing, she decided to become a janitor at the gym. She would clean the gym, answer the phone and get water for the guys. “I wanted to learn more about the culture,” she said. As she would complete her janitorial duties, she couldn’t help but notice the women's bathroom. It was only a storage closet with a hole in the roof above the toilet. Confused, she curiously asked management why the bathroom had been left in such awful condition, and they simply replied, “women don’t box, we had to figure out where to put them.” Now that she has her own space, she is reciprocating the same attitude by joking with the men that come to her facility that “there is no men’s bathroom — it’s a storage closet!” hers-magazine.com
