SCHOOL BOXING

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27112, 7 August 1953, Page 11

SCHOOL BOXING

College Head Explains Ban

«MANY UNDESIRABLE FEATURES”

(New Zealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, August 6. Boxing had little of educational value to offset its many undesirable features, said the headmaster of Bongotai College (Mr A. E. Lock), amplifying today his reasons for discontinuing the annual boxing tournament at the college. Mr Lock said he would welcome an impartial investigation by physical education authorities into school boxing and boxing generally as it affected the individual boxer. “There is little evidence that boxing regarded as a training ground for the manly virtues, is in this respect of particular value compared with other athletic and recreational activities,” he said. “If followed up as a post-school activity, it not infrequently results in injuries that make the boxer an individual quite incapable of accepting any of the responsibilities of leadership. “Medical and physical education authorities have said that some 50 per cent, of all boxers who remain in the game up to the age of 25 or 26 suffer from *punch drunk’ effects to some degree. These effects can result in such symptoms as hand tremor, slower reaction time, jerky movement, impairment of memory and intellectual powers, and general emotional instability- Nose and other injuries are common. “In New Zealand, on an average, one boxer dies (as a result of boxing) every three years,” said Mr Lock. “Schoolboy boxers are not immune from injury: indeed, there is medical evidence that young people are particularly vulnerable to brain damage.” Replying to criticism of his decision by the chairman of the Wellington Boxing Association (Mr T. G. Taylor), Mr Lock said: “I would like to ask Mr Taylor whether the Wellington Boxing Association has made any investigation into the present health and circumstances of the New Zealand boxing champions and other well-known boxers of 20 or 30 years ago.”