The way Kenny Lally sees it, the Pan Am Games next year in Toronto will make or break his future as an amateur boxer.
The first step in that process is he has to qualify for the team. To do that, he'll have to win the 56-kilogram national title and then get selected for the right to compete for Canada in the Games, Aug. 7-15, 2015.
"I've got one more shot at it and this is the big one," said Lally, 25. "Qualifying for the Pan Ams is a realistic goal, this is very doable. It was nice to have that year off but I'm itching to get back to that high-level competition. The time off helped me clear my mind and let my body heal a lot."
Lally has found it tough to gain a solid footing against international opponents ever since he won a silver medal at the Elite Continental championships in Quito, Ecuador, in June 2010. He made it to Canada's national A team after that but missed out on qualifying for the London Olympics in 2012 when he lost a quarterfinal bout in the qualifying tournament in Brazil. Last October at the IABA world championships in Kazahkstan, Lally was eliminated in the first round.
Lally has had only two bouts since then. In March, he ended a five-month absence from the ring with a unanimous victory over Connor Rankin of Maple Ridge. A potential rematch against Rankin at the provincial championships in May in New Westminster was scrapped when Rankin was a no-show and Lally won the title in a walkover. In June, at the Western Canadian championships in Red Deer, Lally scored a TKO win over Brodie Pigeon of Regina to claim the title. With the national tournament one month away, he says he's not worried about being rusty.
"It's never crossed my mind, I've been doing it for so long I'll never lose it," said Lally, who leaves Sunday for a five-day Team West training camp in Kelowna. "I didn't do the high-level stuff but I was still in the ring doing exhibitions. This camp will be perfect because there will be a lot of good sparring and then on Oct. 4 we have Golden Gloves. I can do all the training and the drills here but the thing that holds me back here is the sparring and I'll have good sparring [in Kelowna] and I'm going to push myself."
The Golden Gloves tournament in New Westminster will lead up to Lally's trip to Toronto for nationals three weeks later. Winning nationals won't mean an automatic berth on the national team. Lally would also have to earn a passing grade from Boxing Canada executives but he says his past experience with the national team will help him gain that stamp of approval if he regains his national title from the current 56kg champion, Francois Pratt of Troix Rivieres, Que.
Pratt and Lally have a long history as rivals. In February 2009, Pratt took Lally's national team spot when Lally showed up too heavy on the scales at the weigh-ins for the national championships in Edmonton.
"It will be the fight of the tournament when me and him get in the ring together," said Lally.
Lally spent the summer running boxing fitness classes at UNBC and for the past month has been training all-out to prepare himself for the Team West camp. According to his coach, Bob Pegues, Lally has to shed some weight before he gets into the national ring. He'll make inroads on his battle with the scales next week when he starts sweating out sparring sessions with the likes of 60kg Canadian champion Robbie Cuisine of Edmonton.
"Kenny came back and he was up to 130 pounds [59 kg] and he's feeling it right now," said Pegues, coach of the B.C. provincial team and Team West. "I think he thought he was a little fitter than he was, but one thing about Kenny is he's bearing down and by the end of the camp he'll be in really good shape.
"The issue for him has always been, internationally, he's too small. We're planning on meeting our strength trainer at SFU when we're at Golden Gloves to get a few muscle pounds on him so that when the Pan American Games come in August he'll be the right size. It's going to be a tough year for him but I'm absolutely confident he'll come out of it well."
