By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

Beneath the banners that bear the names of some of the competitive boxers who have trained under him, Clif Johnson, the founder and owner of Lef Jab Boxing Club in West Grove, reflected on the decades-long odyssey of this small but fiercely independent training center that celebrated its 30th anniversary on March 1.

That journey began with a story of hope and redemption. Johnson, then a boxer living in Delaware, first started driving through Avondale. The sweet science of the sport was not the only thing on his mind; his nephew Shawn in Pittsburgh was living through a difficult period and he wanted to find a way to instill discipline in the youngster. 

“I thought, ‘This is a nice, quiet place. I think I’m going to start a gym here,’” he said. “There was an abandoned space next door to the fire station. I spent the first year there. I brought Shawn here, and when he first arrived, he was 280 pounds and I trimmed him down to 200, and he fought in the Golden Gloves and won the Gloves.

“We were on the undercard at Frawley Stadum [in Wilmington], but one of the main event boxers dropped out and asked us to fill in. The idea was that the other boxer would easily knock my nephew out, but my nephew ended up winning the fight in dramatic fashion.”

Shawn, the only four-time heavyweight Golden Glove champion in Pennsylvania, is just one of the more than 700 boxers who have come to Lef Jab to train, to fight competitively and acquire “discipline, structure and independence,” Johnson said.

Over the past 30 years, men and women of all walks of life and professions have come to Lef Jab: a physical therapist, an accountant, a scientist, a computer genius, an actor and hundreds of others who hit the bag, life weights and spar under Johnson’s tutelage. Phoebe Shoap, a speech language pathologist, began coming to Lef Jab with her older brother, Wesley, now in the medical field in Louisiana, when she was 11.

“I went onto become the captain for the soccer team at Ursinus College, and boxing gave me the toughness and the ability to be a leader,” she said. “So much of that came from coming to Lef Jab and learning from the older men and women who I trained with. As a woman, seeing that environment has allowed me to take that with me throughout my life.”

For Ashley Woodard, a mother of four boys in Delaware County, she arrived at Lef Jab two years ago in order to explore a different pathway toward fitness.

“Through my weight loss journey, going to the gym and participating in traditional cardio was not something I enjoyed too much,” she said. “Being able to improve my agility and develop skills on the bag have allowed me to create a sense of discipline. Cliff has a way of instilling that – to help me focus on the basics - and I have found joy in that because it transcends through the rest of my life.”

There are a few mirrors at Lef Jab that allow a member to shadow box against themselves, but to Johnson, the mirrors have a deeper significance, one that encourages each student who picks up the gloves to face off against their largest foe: themselves.

“A lot of people think that they can’t do this, or they can’t do that,” Johnson said. “What I learned when I began boxing was that I could do anything if I put my mind to it. You tell yourself that you can’t do something, but your body tells you otherwise. You don’t win every round and every fight, but that’s what I love about this sport – the heart and the desire it gives you to be better and help you persevere, and it allows you to take that same mentality in everything you do in your life.”

Lef Jab Boxing Club is located at 112 Rosehill Avenue, West Grove, Pa. To learn more, call 

(484) 860-4464.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].