weeklypress.com • ucreview.com • december 5 • 2012 5 Tyrell Biggs


but given credit for not getting knocked out. When the 7th round bell rung, a cut was getting worse over Biggs’ right eye. However, Biggs kept on fighting and Tyson kept on getting closer and closer to knocking out his tall opponent. When the seventh round ended, Biggs appeared to be badly hurt. He had just got knocked around byTyson in the round. Biggs found himself almost getting knocked down. But he managed to stay on his feet and survive the round. The announcers were predicting that Biggs would soon go down and that he barely had enough legs to get him through the next five rounds. When the 8th round bell rung, it became obvious that Tyson would go for the kill and the victory.


COMBO BW


And as predicted…10 seconds into the 8th round, Tyson delivers a devastating right hook that dropped Biggs in the corner of the ring. Biggs falls down to the canvas, but gets back up. The referee allows Biggs to continue the fight after he makes the count, But seconds later, Tyson smashes Biggs with another right hook. This time Biggs falls and remains down. The referee steps in. This fight is over. Iron Mike Ty- son remains the three-time champion of the world. “I lost that fight fair and square,” said Biggs. “He [Tyson] was too fast and too quick. For him to be a small boxer, he knew how to hurt you. And he was fast on his feet and fast with his hands. Tyson was a puncher, but I underestimated his speed. His speed wore me down.”


Despite his brilliant boxing skills, Biggs couldn’t defeat the bigger names in boxing. He was known as an unselfish and hardworking boxer. He was a stylish boxer with a devastat- ing right hook. His boxing movement reminded people of the young Muhammad Ali. He lost to Tyson and Lennox Lewis. Against Lewis, the man he defeated in the Olympics, Biggs got knocked out in the third round as a pro. Tyrell had finished his pro boxing career with a record of 30 wins 10 losses and 20 knockouts. Biggs vanished from box- ing after his last fight. Biggs said he was doing drugs as early as high school. He attended West Philadelphia High School in 1976, 1977 and 1978. He played on the same team with Gene Banks. The Speedboys won the national championship in 1977 and Biggs was the team’s back up power forward. “I made a lot of mistakes from using drugs,” said Biggs. I had a problem overcoming the problem. I was smoking pot in high school and I was popping pills. I played on the basketball team in high school and I was using drugs then. Nobody noticed it because drugs don’t show up in basket- ball like it does boxing. In boxing you have to stay focus on your opponent and your vision has to be clear so you won’t get hit with a punch. If you are using drugs, you will never see the punch coming.” Once he graduated from West Philadelphia High School, Biggs went to look for work and found boxing at Joe Fra- zier’s Gym in North Philadelphia. He found another sport that he fell in love with.


“I was always a sports fan in general,” declared Biggs. “I started to watch boxing and I started to wonder if the sport was real or was it just a cliché’. To me, I was just satisfied just watching boxers fight on television. That’s when I de- cided to go to Joe Frazier’s Gym to try boxing.” Biggs quickly became an overnight sensation where he won almost all his amateur fights. “Joe Frazier’s Gym was a tough gym to train at,” said Biggs. “The gym gave me lots of exposure to the amateur scene.”


Biggs’ amateur record was an outstanding 108 wins, 6 losses and 4 draws. His biggest amateur victories came in the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles where he was on the U.S. boxing team with such fighters as Meldrick Taylor, Pernell Whitaker, Evander Holyfield and Mark Breland. Despite his second love for boxing, Biggs found himself with a serious drug problem.


“I was doing fine at one point, but the drug problem would always come back to bite me,” said Biggs. Biggs said as he got older, he relied on more medical treat- ment and more rehabilitation to kick his drug habit. He got help at the Orange County Rehabilitation Center in Orange County, California. He said the treatments and rehabilita- tion really saved his life and got him back on the right track. He said his fight against drugs isn’t quite over yet,


continued from page 4 November 28th School Tour before the November 30th continued from page 1


. The event proved timely. It occurred only two days deadline for students to apply to a district


citywide or special admission high school, or transfer to a district neighborhood school. The tour included: Young Scholars Frederick Douglas, 2118 West Norris, the Boys Latin Charter School, 5501 Cedar Ave, and Penn Alexander Elementary, 4209 Spruce St. The UC Review visited Boys Latin and Penn Alexander. David Hardy, the CEO and Founder of Boys Latin, now in its 6th


year, greeted parents in the school’s cafeteria. “Boys Latin is the only all boys school in the city,” Hardy explained. “It’s a college prep school. Every student must take four years of Latin.” Harding continued, emphasizing the fact that school does not provide any “curriculum that isn’t [applied] toward college preparation.” Though that isn’t to say that it’s all academics at Boys Latin. Students have a host of electives and extra curricular activities—ranging from sports, arts, music, theater, mock trials and robotics—to choose from. Hardy kept his message about the success of Boy’s Latin short. Rather than tell parents about the school’s quality, he showed them by asking high school seniors to lead three groups of parents on tours throughout the school. James Rouse and Miles Burton led the tour that this reporter joined. Throughout, both students were very enthusiastic how much they liked and respected the school’s teachers and staff. Boys Latin re- mains an academically challenging high school, and because it’s a public school, students to do not have take tests when applying. But hard work at Boys Latin takes students far. “The classes that students are placed in depend on how advanced the students are in a particular subject,” Burton explained, adding that certain courses will have a mix of students from different grade levels. “The class sizes, Burton continued, vary from “six to thirty students.”


Just because students do not need to test into the schools, failure is not accepted. “If they fail a class, they are put on academic probation and have to attend Saturday school,” Rouse explained, adding that school comes equipped with tutors. When it comes to the school’s academics, the students appreciate the value in learning Latin. “Latin is a dead language but it helps students develop English skills,” Rouse noted. Also, as a “Romance Language, Latin is similar to other Romance Languages like Spanish and Portuguese.”


Students, Burton continued, receive benchmarks every six weeks to prepare “us for the PSA’s that we take our junior year.” With regard to the school’s safety, “It’s not a violent school,” Bur- ton explained. “There are a few knuckleheads, but they’re put in line. When personalities first meet, you have to adjust at the beginning. People are different. Some want to prove that they’re the alpha male,” Burton explained. “Everyone at this school comes from different backgrounds, different parts of the city and different schools. How- ever, most of the students connect,” Burton, added. Some of the schools extra curricular activities, such as its theater productions give students the opportunity to exercises their perfor- mance skills. “It’s not like other schools where the same people end up playing the leads all of the time,” Rouse noted.


but he’s doing much better as a person and a human being. “I feel good about myself,” said Biggs. “I have been clean


from drugs for some time now. God controls everything on this earth and he controls everything in my life. God keeps me strong. This is God’s world and I’m part of his world. Today, I try to teach kids the Good, Bad and the Ugly about life. I teach them about boxing and them not to make the same mistakes I made. If I do that, I feel I have completed God’s mission in my life.” Today, Tyrell Biggs is a boxer trainer for young kids at Shepard Recreation Center located at 5700 Haverford Av- enue.


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Having students lead the tour at Boy’s Latin seemed to speak volumes to parents. Before traveling to Penn Alexander in a yellow school bus, everyone gathered in the cafeteria for lunch. One mother noted, “The students were well-spoken. They made eye contact. And I liked the fact that there weren’t any girls at the school to distract them.


“The kids who attend Boys Latin, love it,” Wang noted, adding,


“We didn’t have to try too hard [when it comes to promoting these schools]. Parents know good quality when they see it. There’s talk that there might be a girls version of this school in the near future,” Wang added. “Penn Alexander,” Wang continued, as the bus made its way East


through West Philly, “is an example of what every neighborhood school should be like.” Wang’s remark referred in part to the partnership created between the University of Pennsylvania and the School District of Philadelphia. “This school opened 12 years ago,” explained Sheila Sydnor, the principal of the Penn Alexander School (PAS) from the school’s lobby. With regard to the agreement between Penn and the school district, Sydnor explained, “we can only have 18 students per each Kindergarten class.” Currently, PAS has 560 students.“We’re able to reduce class size as the result of the $1,330 per student that Penn gives us towards supplies,” Sydnor noted. In addition, PAS has met success as an educational facility, due to the fact that its teachers are site-selected. That means that the school board determines what teachers will make good matches with certain schools, Sydnor ex- plained. PAS, Sydnor continued, has a “diverse student body. They yield from every ethnicity and income bracket. We get them all.” Like Boys Latin, the students at PAS do not have to test into the school. How- ever, enrollment “is only available to students who live in the Catch- ment area. The school district set the boundaries,” Sydnor explained. “One of the reasons why we opened the school was to alleviate the pressure felt by the Lea and Wilson schools that were overbooked with students. Also, it was part of Penn’s revitalization plan.” Sydnor continued. “In the beginning, we couldn’t get parents to come. Now the school has had too much success.” Sydnor’s remarks tie into that there’s a waiting list for the school’s kindergarten. The School Dis- trict, Sydnor explained, has determined that enrollment for kindergar- ten comes on a first come, first serve basis. As a result, “parents will camp out overnight to enroll their kids,” Sydnor said. Since not all of the parents on last week’s school tour live in PAS’s Catchment area, Wang asked, “what are one or two things that parents here can take form PAS?”


“Parental involvement,” Sydnor said. “That’s one of the most im- portant things. Also, mutual respect between parents and teachers. People can’t blame one another for problems,” Sydnor continued, adding, “It’s better to have a discussion on why there is a problem.” For more information on the Philadelphia School Partnership:


www.philaschoolpartnership.org. For a list of top-notch Philadelphia Schools: GreatPhillySchool.org.


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