Boxing clever

The gloves are on the hands of 14-year-old Shanice Fleming as she skips round the ring, following the instructions of her coach Stuart Head at the Golden Ring Club in Millbrook, Southampton.

Shanice has been boxing for about a year and a half and, according to Stuart, she shows real talent.

In fact, she is due to step into the ring for her first proper bout in October, although she has been sparring with boys at the club - and holding her own - for some time now.

Shanice obediently follows Stuart's instructions, albeit sometimes a little grumpily - she is a teenager after all.

She throws hook after hook, jab after jab with a look of total focus on her face and seemingly untiring energy, fuelled by her desire to get it right.

This dedicated, hard working girl is a far cry from the brawling, problem teen of two years ago, who was fighting in the streets rather than the ring, routinely in trouble with the police and hadn't been to school for 18 months.

By her own admission, Shanice was trouble. "When I was coming up for 12 I was getting in trouble with the police," she says as we chat after her session in the ring. I've been nicked for public order, assault, criminal damage. I had the police on my case all the time before - they hardly ever are now."

Shanice, who has been diagnosed as having attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), was always a difficult child.

"She was always very angry and unhappy," says her mother, Jackie.

"Even at the age of five she had educational psychologists in to help. It was a combination of a lot of things that led to her bad behaviour but I think the ADHD was a lot of it. It makes her hard to reason with - all she can see is her anger."

Shanice started boxing training when she started at The Serendipity Centre, an independent school in Thornhill which specialises in providing tailor-made education to girls who have failed in - or been failed by - mainstream education.

The school for "unteachable" girls recently received a glowing Ofsted report. Given Shanice's history of violence, eyebrows may well be raised by the decision to train her as a boxer. Sue Tinson, head teacher at Serendipity, admits that she did have some doubts when Shanice chose boxing.

"It was a difficult shout because Shanice's first response for anything that didn't go her way was to communicate through violence," she says.

Sue, added: "She would head butt, smash, throw things and her language was awful.

"But everything about Shanice was about feeling undervalued, having low self-esteem and really having nothing positive to say about herself.

"I spoke at length with Stuart, the boxing instructor, before we made the decision. What I didn't want to do was arm Shanice so she could really bop someone on the nose so we started it on a trial basis.

"Anything you do that's different has an element of risk but I think the people who make the most progress with these children are the ones who are willing to take that risk.

"Sending her to boxing was empowering for her. She had so much anger before. She had so many questions without answers. She was saying why do I have ADHD?' why do these things make me so angry?'. All this anger was building up and up.

"Kids need an outlet. And with something like boxing, you start to learn rules."

Shanice says that boxing has helped her a lot.

"It gives me something to take my anger out on, where I've got ADHD," says the teenager from Thornhill.

"I can control my anger now. Afterwards I feel drained in a good way - Im much calmer. I feel less angry these days and I feel much happier, I get on better."

One of the bonuses of Shanice's boxing, as well as giving an outlet for her anger, is that she is much fitter.

Shanice says that her weight was an issue for her before. Having been excluded from school, she was getting just one hour a day contact time with a teacher. Unfortunately, Shanice's mother Jackie was diagnosed with breast cancer in February 2006.

Her treatment took up a lot of her time and the chemotherapy and radiotherapy made her weak. It became increasingly difficult for her to control Shanice, who would spend her days aimlessly, getting into trouble, eating and drinking for want of anything better to do.

Jackie's cancer has now gone into remission. She says: "The biggest difference with the boxing is her self-esteem. To say she hated herself before is an understatement. She despised herself which made her behaviour worse. But she gets praise at boxing because she's good at it and with her fitness and weight-loss she's seeing the results for herself.

"Before she was eating and getting angrier and fatter and hating herself more - it was escalating."

Getting Shanice a place at Serendipity has not only turned her life around - and that of her mother - it may even have saved it.

Jackie says: "I couldn't see a future for her other than the struggle that we'd been having, which was horrendous.

"It's been life for so many years that it's such a relief to be able to do something during the day and not worry every time the phone rings that it's the school. She's so much easier to deal with now. She'll protest but she does what I ask.

"She used to climb out of her window and run away. I'd be in my car driving round the streets, not knowing where she was. I don't have that anymore.

"I think when the Local Education Authority said they'd fund her place here that saved both our lives. When she first came here she actually said that she didn't see a future and now you do don't you?" she says to her daughter who nods in agreement, "and I do too."

Head teacher Sue adds: "If she'd continued she would have received some sort of custodial sentence.

"If she'd continued as she was, she would have been dead by the time she was 20."

The thuggish, miserable, overweight teenager who spent her time drinking, smoking, fighting and generally getting into trouble who I'm hearing about seems a far cry from the polite, smiling, slightly shy girl I find myself chatting to.

One of the big differences is that Shanice now has a positive future to look forward to.

She has her first proper fight coming up in October and Stuart says that she has the talent to take her boxing as far as she wants to.

Sue is hoping that Shanice will become a professional boxer, perhaps going on to work with troubled teenage girls herself.

Shanice is adamant she won't return to the life of hanging round and getting into trouble that she used to lead.

"Getting into trouble, it's one of those things. I've been there, done it and I ain't going back there."

For more information on the Serendipity Centre visit serendipityeducation.com