Community came together in Vawn, Sask over the weekend to celebrate 30 years of Danny McCaffrey's Turtle River Boxing Club. (Submitted photos)

By Martin Martinson

A community staple

Celebrating 30 years: Danny McCaffrey’s Turtle River Boxing Club

Dec 8, 2022 | 12:52 PM

The Turtle River Boxing Club recently celebrated 30 years, and with it, the man who’s made it all possible, Danny McCaffrey.

The club recently held a special 30^th Anniversary dinner in celebration of the three-decade milestone, and the work of its founder and club owner—a man who’s left an indelible mark on many.

Angela Blanchette, who spearheaded the celebration dinner, knows first-hand the impact the club and McCaffrey have had on countless individuals over the years. Her daughter, Laney joined the boxing club back at age 10 and continues to commute to this day for training, a decade later after moving to North Battleford.

“The boxing club became like Laney’s second family and she looked so forward to Mondays and Wednesdays getting to spend time there,” she said. “Danny is just so good with kids, and just makes everyone feel welcome and important. Like one man said at the dinner, it doesn’t matter if you are or not, he makes you feel like a superstar.”

Danny McCaffrey pictured here over the years with boxing students Adam Fransoo and Laney Blanchette. (Submitted photos/Angela Blanchette)

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About 80 people attended the anniversary dinner, including current and former athletes from the club from over the years, a number of whom spoke to the lasting impact their time training at the Turtle River Club has had.

A well-known fixture of the sport to many throughout the region, McCaffrey started the Turtle River Boxing Club back in 1992. It was a dream a long time in the making, going back to his early days on the family farm just outside of Vawn, SK.

In fact, McCaffrey can still recall the exact moment his passion for the sport hit him like a left hook.

“When I was about 11, I saw a picture of Joe Frazier and Mohamad Ali in Life Magazine,” he recalled with an audible smile. “Frazier had just knocked down Ali and he was walking back into the corner, and when I saw that oh boy my eyes were big, and I knew I wanted to do that.”

However, at that time, back in the early 1970s, there weren’t the same opportunities to do so just anywhere.

“Out in the small country, there was no opportunity to [try boxing],” he recalled. “You couldn’t join a boxing club because there was just no club around. You had to be in the bigger cities.”

Because of that, McCaffrey remained active through his youth playing hockey, until his early 20s, when he moved to Regina and had his first chance to engage in his true athletic passion.

That is where McCaffrey got his initial first-hand experience in the sport, and the first seeds were sown for the future club. After playing senior hockey for a few more years when he moved back to the community, McCaffrey made the decision to open a club of his own for the next generation growing up with an interest in the sport like himself.

“It just came to me, ‘I’m going to start a boxing club,’” he said. “I just wanted to give the opportunity to other kids to box from here that I didn’t have when I was young.”

From the infancy stages of the club, held at Edam School for the first two years from ’92-94, the club would bounce around to wherever they could find in the years that followed.

Moving from there into the upstairs room of the old Vawn Convent, then later the old Vawn School gym, then Vawn Hall, the largely nomad club finally settled in ’02, completing the building of their very own gym, where the club has been located since for the last two decades.

The club has seen great success as a small community gym that has sent athletes to compete internationally in places such as Poland, the United States, and Cuba, since those early days. Though unsurprising to those who know him, it’s the smaller-scale victories that stand out to the club’s founder just as much, looking back.

“What stands out is to see the kids, and how they progress so well,” McCaffrey said. “You don’t have to win a championship to be a champion, and while some kids maybe never did win a championship to me they still were champions.

“They trained hard and were committed and that’s a part of being successful. Everyone who came in and committed themselves were champions to me.” – Danny McCaffrey

McCaffrey’s nephew, Joey LaClare won a national title in 2002 boxing out of the local club, along with multiple Western Canadian Championships and a Ringside World Championship tournament in Kansas City in 2005. He still helps out at the club today, assisting in training the next generation, and worked closely with Blanchette to help organize the weekend’s celebration.

“It was an awesome night, and it was awesome to see a lot of the existing members as well as a lot of the faces that have been involved throughout all these years,” LaClare said. “It was a full house and it was pretty special.”

Among those who spoke following the dinner were former boxing students, Adam Fransoo, and Vaughn Fauth.

Fransoo, who’s now in his mid-20s, spent about four years at the club from ages 14-18 and said it’s the lessons learned both in the ring and out that have remained with him even today.

“I remember the first thing we always did was skip to warm up and Danny would say even if you catch the rope on your feet, if you trip up, you just keep moving and get the rope turning again,” Fransoo said.

“That translated well for me in my own personal life too, that whenever you trip up you got to keep your feet moving and get that rope turning again. That was kind of a cool lesson I learned from training under Danny and one of the first-ever things I remember picking up and learning when I went to his gym.”

Fauth, who didn’t start boxing until his late 30s, spent about four years with the club in the mid-2010s. He spoke to the welcoming and sincere demeanor McCaffrey brought to the gym each session.

“I was old,” Fauth said with a laugh. “I didn’t start boxing until I was about 38, but it didn’t matter that I was some old, fat 38-year-old guy [sic]. The way he talked to me, and I’d see him in the ring with the kids too, he always was someone who really cared.

“That can be a hard trait to find.”

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Martin.Martinson@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @MartyMartyPxP1