DIANE MAKAR MURPHY At Buckeye Elks center, boxing has a familiar ring

When Lenzie Morgan slams the heavy bag, it aches. At least, I ache watching it. In the cruiserweight class, trim, but towering over me, he has a record of 17 wins and 18 losses. He's 35, and with the help of his trainer Frank West, he's hoping to stage a comeback and win a title, practicing as often as he can at this small downtown gym -- knocking the heck out of the heavy bag.
Less than a dozen feet away, dancing with a speed bag, is 10-year-old Chad Brown. With the help of his trainer, also West, he's hoping to box his way to a Golden Gloves championship.
The gym is a small affair, nestled in a corner of the basement floor of the Buckeye Elks Youth Center. Against one wall is a floor-level boxing ring, along another are mirrors. Bags are bungied to ceiling and floor.
Fewer now: Some days, upward of nine boxers, mostly children, come to train with volunteer West and his assistant trainer, Walter Perez -- who, incidentally, I tower over.
"In its day, I had 20 to 35 boxers," West laments. "Now, it's basketball that draws the children. It's higher profile. Michael Jordan. And it's a lot easier. Now, it's maybe nine one day, or next time five."
West began boxing when he was 13 years old, competing in Golden Gloves -- a tournament for amateur boxers.
"Overall, I participated three years," West said. "My record was up and down year by year." He won two Golden Gloves titles.
His background: In the early 1950s, West served in the Army, boxing some (he was 1952 Army champ at Fort Benning, Ga.) but mostly training others as part of the 30th Regiment Boxing Team, Special Services.
"I had some professional fights in the service at 18, but then I was on the verge of going professional before that," West said. Nonetheless, he said, "My thing was always to train."
When his enlistment was up, West worked at Youngstown Sheet & amp; Tube Co., but, said West, "boxing was my heart." He entered some professional fights as a welterweight (147 to 159 pounds), "did pretty good," and tallied 24 wins and 3 losses, he said. Still, it wasn't enough to get a title fight. "I strived to be a world champion," he said. "But you had to have 50 fights and a heck of a record to get anywhere."
Begins training: As his hopes for a title bout faded, West began training youths at the YMCA and then at Buckeye Elks Youth Center.
Among the pros West has trained are Morgan; Jeff Lampkin, now a heavyweight; Eto Whitaker, a light heavyweight, and his son Robert West, a welterweight. Like so many old boxing movies, West said, the professionals tend to drop their early trainers when they hit the big time.
To train for a Golden Gloves tournament, West's prot & eacute;g & eacute;s run about four miles every other day, then do "a whole lot of boxing," he said. They box five rounds a day in the gym, maybe six, then get on the bag. It's four rounds on the heavy bag, then three rounds on the light bag, then jumping rope for two or three rounds, at three minutes a round. Every day.
More exercise: By the time they turn pro, West's boxers run five miles a weekday and seven or eight miles on the weekend days. West likes them to get in seven rounds on the heavy bag every other day and to spar every day. Nine rounds on the speed bag works their timing.
Watching Morgan punch, I wonder if age makes a big difference. "When are you too old?" I ask.
Both Morgan and West reply: "When you start takin' a whoopin'."
"I treat all the boys like champions," West said of his amateurs. "But I can spot the person with heart -- the one who'll go all the way -- in a minute. I don't treat them any different, though."
The ones West expects to do well have some things in common. "They pick up what you tell them real fast," he said. "The potential is there."
Nervous mom: Chad, a Garfield Elementary School pupil from Warren, has trained with West for a year. "At first I was a little nervous at every match," his mother, Scherry Perry, said. "But as long as he gives more hits than he gets, I'm behind him. I see him going all the way. Golden Gloves, the Olympics, all of it. He's dedicated. And Mr. West is the best trainer around."
West leans over and says softly. "He's one," West says as he taps his heart.