Erica Rodriguez remembers well starting her collegiate career at Northwestern University 15 years ago.
It didn’t take long for that experience to become stressful for the Ohio native. She was working hard academically, but felt like she was struggling to keep up with her peers.
So, she decided to begin working out at a nearby boxing gym, which turned out to be a great move because she was able to relieve stress while at the same time feel better about herself.
She’s now bringing the basics of that experience to girls throughout Chicago, including the West Side and Oak Park.
“It became pretty transformative for me,” said Rodriguez, who studied human development at Northwestern and pursued a career in that area, while becoming a competitive boxer for many years.
These days, Rodriguez is program director for Box United, which offers the Fight Like a Girl program for girls ages 10 to 18 at three locations in Chicagoland, including the west side at the Salvation Army Freedom Center, 825 N. Christiana Ave., Chicago, in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood.
The program has 70 participants who visit for two hours twice per week. It’s a structured program: The first half hour is all about homework. Then it shifts to non-contact boxing, i.e., punching into gloves or mitts with a peer. It concludes with an emotional/social learning session.
Rodriguez points to a dire statistic that says girls in Chicago Public Schools score higher in post-traumatic stress disorder than veterans returning from active duty. Often, girls are socialized to internalize stressful behaviors, she said, instead of externalizing them.
“When they come to our program, they get to externalize those things and work through to form a new relationship to their body and the voice inside their head,” she said. “
The program is funded by the city of Chicago Department of Family and Support Services, and is partly focused on girls who are either involved with the juvenile justice system or indirectly impacted by it. The good news, Rodriguez said, is that “across the county, there are pretty few girls who that are on probation. So, understanding that, we’ve opened the program to all girls.
“It’s a healing-centered program,” she said. “We keep in mind a young person might come in with any experiences, trauma or otherwise, and we’re cognizant of creating a healing space.”
That said, the endgame of the program, which is free but requires parent or guardian consent, is developing confidence for solid, astute decision-making.
“The decisions you make in your life reflect how you feel about yourself,” Rodriguez said, adding the program is available to “provide a place for girls to heal and have their needs met, and get the support they need to feel strong and self-assured. That leads to girls making good decisions in their lives.”
Fight Like a Girl is the brainchild of Box United founder and executive director Mary Kate Vanecko, and is rooted in her own experience of needing an outlet that challenged her to grow.
There are plans afoot for expanding the program, including opening the first girls boxing gym in Chicagoland, possibly by the end of 2025.
Rodriguez has been with Box United since October, and even since then, she’s seen marked changes among the girls with which she interacts.
“For a lot of the girls, I see them walking in the door with more confidence,” she said. “When I ask them why they joined, ‘Oh, my mom made me.’ Now they are a boxer, and that’s where they belong.
“I see them developing a growth mindset, so feeling like when you can’t do something, that’s not the end of the road.”
To learn more about the Fight Like a Girl program, visit https://boxunited.org/