Haffner boxes for ‘Clean Fight’

Justin Seward
Times Reporter

 

Local boxer Katelyn Haffner has been involved in the sport for 12 years, but is now kicking it up a notch, joining 14 other dedicated women who will box for the International Development Enterprises (IDE) Canada’s ‘Clean Fight.’
The Clean Fight initiative supports a project in the upper east, west and northern regions of Ghana. The money raised will go towards designing and creating hygienic latrines and facilities for washing hands after defecation.
“It was always in the back of my mind to do it,” said Haffner. “It is a white collar boxing event, nothing too crazy. With this group we train at a gym (Impact Boxing) in Calgary. The opportunity came and I grabbed it. It’s fun and exciting to be competing in it now.”
Haffner has trained for this event quite frequently and has followed a regime that involves multiple fitness components.
“In the gym we focus more on technical training,” said Haffner. “And the conditioning is left up to us as individuals. I do lots of running, sprints and some cross fit style training where it’s incorporating strength and conditioning. Aside from that, it’s the actual boxing training where we do a lot of focus on pad work, sparring, technical movements and combinations.”
She added that the best part of the training process has been watching the 75 per cent of competitors who had never put boxing gloves on before get over their fears and gain confidence while seeing the other 25 per cent improve upon their strengths in the ring.
Each of the 14 ladies had to come up with $5,000 towards the cause as a participant, which was achieved through garage sales, bake sales and selling personal belongings.
However, Haffner is doing something different using her business, the Standard One Stop Shoe Shop: she will be entering names into a draw for a gift basket, gift certificates to the shoe store and tickets to the local movie theatre in town, with the mindset of creating a buzz around town for the event.
“I also believe it’s important to support locally … and not always is the money staying locally,” she said. “I’m trying to think of ways how to keep it local. That would be by supporting other businesses with the prize basket.”
If you want to donate or buy tickets to Haffner’s Clean Fight, you can call her at 403-324-9999 or visit IDEcanada.org.
The Clean Fight 2015 boxing matches will take place on Nov. 19 at Cowboys Dance Hall in Calgary starting at 5 p.m.