MSU faculty member, father and “Coach” Ali Easley began his boxing passion with his childhood neighbor, kickboxing and doing martial arts together.
Easley said, to them, it didn’t seem like a sport or lifelong passion, but just two young boys play fighting.
In the front yard practicing moves in a karate uniform, Easley’s cousin stopped him and said, “You think you really know what you’re doing? You should come to the boxing gym with me.”
Just then, Easley was convinced to go to his first boxing gym in downtown Pittsburgh.
“I remember we were walking up the steps, and the boxing gym was on the second floor of an old warehouse,” Easley said. “I’m hearing this 'duh duh duh duh,' and I couldn’t figure out what the sound was. I get to the top of the steps, he opened the door and just the whole place came to life.”
Easley’s 11-year-old eyes darted across the gym and saw big, shirtless athletes furiously hitting speed bags. He quickly was matched to spar with a young boy around his size.
“From that day forward I said, ‘Okay I get it. I think this is the real sport,’” Easley said.
Discovering his life's work
Easley moved to mid-Michigan to teach at Lansing Community College and Michigan State University, and never stopped his passion for boxing.
In 1998, he took over the reins at Lansing’s local boxing gym, Crown Boxing, for competitive training, student boxing courses and beginner adult and youth classes. Filled with champion belts, newspaper features and vintage boxing posters, the gym became his home.
Easley also began Help a Willing Kid Foundation, or HAWK, a non-profit organization that combined elements of boxing and a safe place to help underprivileged and impoverished youth in the community.
As faculty advisor for Phi Sigma Pi National Honors Fraternity, Easley brought Teach for America and HAWK together to tutor children, have MSU culinary students cook and prepare food for the youth, and offer laundry facilities and showers – all within the walls of Crown Boxing Club.
“My work here with the kids, the boxing and the community, is like my life’s work,” Easley said. “This is something that I established to better the community, foster a learning environment for kids and … hopefully this continues to grow and have the same mission and helping people that it has today.”
"Coach" to professor
On top of HAWK and coaching at Crown Boxing, Easley teaches over eight varying levels of boxing courses at MSU.
Before beginning class each semester, Easley reminds the students of the world-class facility they will work in. Although some courses are catered towards beginner students, the quality and rigor of class time aren't downplayed compared to competitive athletes' daily sessions.
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“Instead you have to raise up a little bit to the standards that we have,” Easley said. “Anybody can do it. It’s just once they make their mind up they’re either going to put the effort in or they’re going to say, ‘Ah, I don’t want that,’ and they’re going to quit.”
At the end of each semester, he requires every student to write a one-page opinion paper. Throughout their essays, most students write about how great it felt to be involved in a sports environment or the discipline, energy and effort they received from the class.
“Those that stick it out, like I said, they learn more about themselves in this class and they make more friends in this class than they will in any other class,” Easley said.
After taking Easley’s MSU course, public policy junior Andrew Schulman, kinesiology junior Ethan Mostyn and psychology senior Julia Diskin returned to the gym for a sweaty and intense open workout session.
“He’s as legit as it gets in terms of a coach and facility,” Schulman said. “He doesn’t put up with bull----.”
“Zero tolerance,” Mostyn said.
“No coming to class late,” Schulman said. “No taking breaks when you’re not allowed to unless you’re yakking. That’s what he’ll tell you on the first day.”
Even as beginners, Easley coaches students on proper boxing training, Schulman and Mostyn said.
At 6:40 p.m. sharp, Easley stepped into the boxing ring to begin class while students sat on blue wooden benches that surrounded the ring. As soon as he heard the back door creak, notifying him of a student walking in late, Easley stopped his speech and paced around the ring as the student nimbly found a seat amongst the silent and wide-eyed students.
“If you’re not on time for this particular course you’re not only hurting yourself, but you’re hurting your team as well,” Easley said. “If you want to be successful and you want to respect the team that’s here, you need to be on time too … If you’re on time, you’re late. If you’re early, then you’re on time.”
Although classes are filled to the brim with upwards of 200 students, Easley always remembers each student’s name through intimate interactions in the coach-to-student environment.
“Sometimes when you fill out those surveys and it says, ‘The professor relates to me as a person,’ and people put ‘Inferior,’ because they think this is his gym, it’s my way or the highway,” Easley said. “Which is the rule, but then I ask you this question: ‘How many professors in your entire time at school know you, know your name, know your tendencies, know you better than you think they know you?' And that’s the relationship I have with the students, and I think a lot of them are quite surprised at that.”
Through Easley’s 30-plus years in coaching, he’s learned from his former students that return to the gym as ringside physicians or referees for competitive events.
“When I see their willingness to come back, I think that they’ve taught me a lot about how you can move forward in a different path of life but yet have a desire to help others in some capacity,” Easley said. “I see what I do with the kids, helping them, as what they do when they become adults and they come back and help in that regard. It’s very rewarding, and it’s taught me a lot over the years.”
Easley invites all students to try his boxing courses but warns that the demand may be stricter compared to other kinesiology courses.
“Come, see, try it,” Coach Easley said. “Be prepared to work. Be prepared to sweat.”
