Minutes into Thursday night’s Hamilton County school board meeting, District 3 Representative Joe Smith approached the podium to recognize the recent athletic accomplishments of TJ Arnold, a high school senior at Lookout Valley.
“What an honor to stand before my peers and do what I’m about to do,” began Smith, who has known Arnold for the past six years. Then he handed the 17-year-old boxer a certificate from the board to salute the silver medal he recently won in the 123-pound division at the USA Boxing National Championships in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Said Smith’s son, Andy, who has coached Arnold in the YCAP boxing program since he was 12: “When I first met TJ, he was a scrawny kid who didn’t have a lot to say, who was struggling academically, struggling in a lot of ways. Who knew a punching bag and a pair of boxing gloves could change the trajectory of a young man’s life so dramatically?”
This is how dramatically: Before someone in Arnold’s neighborhood recommended him to the Smiths to join YCAP (Youth and Community Action Program), he was, in his own words, “A bad kid with bad grades.”
Now carrying a 3.5 GPA, Arnold has so impressed the principal at Lookout Valley, Lee Ann McBryar, that she said of him: “TJ’s a gentleman, always behaves, makes good grades and his peers all look up to him. He’s doing things they can only dream about.”