By Jeff Hicks
KITCHENER —
Allan Cayenne is prepared to make big sacrifices.
No more chocolate-covered peanut butter cups. No more sour patch gummies. No more hand-spun cotton candy.
His sweet tooth, if he gets the call to become one of Mandy Bujold’s Champions for Charity, will be pulled in submission to the discipline of the sweet science.
“I am a candy addict,” said Cayenne, the 41-year-old local realtor from Waterloo and beer nuts-chomping president of Kitchener-Waterloo Oktoberfest.
“That’s the thing I’m most scared about — giving up candy for my training.”
So while the rest of the 70-or-so hopefuls who showed up for Champions for Charity tryouts at the Sydfit Health Centre may have fretted about getting punched in the face, the tea-totalling Cayenne agonized over trading a potential cavity for the fund-raising gravity of helping McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation.
Three months of intense training.
Twenty willing boxers pulled from the ranks of local business professionals and community leaders.
Ten hand-picked, competitive bouts on April 4 at Tapestry Hall in Cambridge in a night of sugar-coated glitz, sequine-studded glamour and big-dollar community clout for the hospital with the fastest-growing kids-only emergency department in Ontario and and of the most advanced neonatal intensive-care units in Canada.
The fund-raising goal for the Champions for Charity?
A half-million dollars —about the amount raised for kids by Bujold’s first two covid-sandwiching Champions for Charity events in 2019 and 2024.
Cayenne would give up 500,000 skittles and nerds for the chance to help raise $500,000 for a children’s hospital that helps so many kids in Waterloo Region.
Jabs over jawbreakers? In The Brawl at Tapestry Hall in partnership with STOIDI, he can have both.
“I just love doing thing that bring community together and supports a good cause,” said Cayenne, who weighed in at 186 pounds on Night One as Hopeful No. 36.
“This does everything like that. It builds up community. It shows people we care about them and what they’re going through.”
Ordinary people doing something extra-ordinary for their community.
That’s why Champions for Charity, where safety and fun for participants is a top priority, endures and grows every year.
“The training is what makes you extra ordinary,” said Syd Vanderpool, the one-time North American boxing belt-holder and director of coaching for Champions for Charity, as he addressed the tryouts.
“Ordinary people are watching. When you do the training, you become extra-ordinary.”
It’s all very intriguing to Sophia Clark, a 41-year-old Hespeler mother of two young boys and a project manager at Govan Brown & Associates construction company in Kitchener.
The training. The Fight Night. Representing her company and women in construction. Raising money for a great cause. Hopeful No. 55 finds the whole package powerfully alluring.
“I just like the challenge — that’s why I’m here,” said Clark, whose sports background includes ringette and hockey, but not boxing.
“Just being here is stepping out of your comfort zone.”
That’s something McMaster Children’s Hospital Foundation appreciates. Ordinary people willing to put themselves in extra-ordinary circumstances for the kids’ hospital.
“They’re very courageous for coming forward and doing this,” said Vanessa Macedo, development officer at Hamilton Health Science Foundation — which supports McMaster Children’s Hospital.
“We can’t thank them enough for putting themselves in the ring.”
For most of us, boxing may seen an extreme venture. Even for charity.
But going to extremes and working the charity canvas is what Jaime Wilson, the vice-president of philanthropy at St. Mary’s General Hospital and Hopeful No. 56., is used to.
She loves expeditions. She even climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
“It’s been a number of years since I’ve had that type of goal,” said Wilson, flanked by her “entourage” of son Henry and partner Derek.
“I feel like now’s the time.”
Now is also the time for Bujold and her team to determine who will take one of 20 Champions for Charity spots. The matchups will be made. Training will begin in the New Year.
Tickets will go on sale for Fight Night tables on Jan. 15.
A year ago, they sold out faster than Taylor Swift.
“You’re going to be challenging yourself in a whole new way,” Bujold, a two-time Olympian and world champion for gender equity, told the assembled hopefuls.
“You’re going to learn a lot about yourself.”
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