This rising boxing star is headed to Mexico to train with top competition
CBC
Suri Pafford may only be 14, but she packs a punch. She has big career aspirations, and she's doing whatever she can to make them a reality.
The teenage boxer from Quispamsis is headed to Mexico in January for the Adelita Championship, and she will stay there for another month to train with elite competition.
"Honestly just to get a different experience, like different coaching styles, different boxing styles," said Pafford. "I think it would … make me perform better."
Pafford describes her boxing style as patient, but explosive. Last year she won her first gold medal at the Brampton Cup in Ontario, and has travelled to international competitions in Ireland and Mexico.
Between boxing training, strength and conditioning, and running, she says she spends 11 hours training each week. It makes for a rigid schedule. She does her homework right after she gets home from school, and then goes to train, mixed in with some off days to hang out with friends.
Pafford's coach, Chris Peters, says she has an advantage over lots of other athletes her age. Since she was six, she's been doing strength and conditioning training.
"Suri's got, definitely, some great potential," said Peters, owner of East Coast Boxing & Performance Center in Saint John. "She's years ahead of most, to be quite honest."
She realized about four years ago that she really wanted to put the time into her boxing career, and now she's dreaming big. She wants to make Team Canada, and then be part of Canada's Olympic team. But she says just training isn't enough.
She often goes to Nova Scotia to train, because there is more competition there. In Saint John, there are only a few boxing gyms nearby, and there aren't enough women at her level that she can fight against.
"There's not many sparring partners … so that's kind of tough for me to get training in," said Pafford.
She's picked up some wins at the international competitions she's been to, and even defeated a two-time Irish national champion.
"They were pretty good. I gained a lot of experience from it, just getting to know different boxing styles from different countries," said Pafford.
Peters says female boxing is fairly new, and still gaining popularity, compared to places like Europe. The most recent Canada Games, hosted by Prince Edward Island in 2023, was the first time women's boxing was included in the event.
It's one of the reasons Pafford is going to spend a month in Mexico in the new year. She's one of three athletes from the East Coast Boxing & Performance Center who will stay in the country for a month, but the other two are in their 20s, says Peters.
A program aimed at preventing homelessness on Prince Edward Island that was halted last year due to funding issues is back up and running again with support from the provincial and federal governments.
Large crowds of people lined up around the block outside a pair of packed community halls in central Alberta on Wednesday night, to attend town halls focused on the idea of the province seeking independence from Canada.
The sight of a cyclist in January in the Yukon can prompt confusion from some onlookers — but historians say bicycles were being used to get around the territory in winter long before cars.
On Prime Minister Mark Carney's first day of talks in Beijing, the government agreed to co-operate with China more on clean and conventional energy after years of difficult relations between the two countries.
The city says it is one step away from returning the Bearspaw feeder main to full service, with a final water pump scheduled to be turned on Friday morning — if the pipe continues to remain stable.
When David St-Pierre saw the snow outside his window in Brossard, Que., south of Montreal, he decided to chance the metropolitan region's shiny light-rail transit system once more.
A Calgary lawyer who falsified court documents and repeatedly lied to a client, causing the man to miss out on parenting time with his youngest child, pleaded guilty to forgery on Thursday.
The Crown has stayed an assault charge against Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. president Jeremy Tunraluk.
Alberta’s minister of hospitals says a province-wide strategy has begun to ease the strain on the acute care system as frontline doctors continue to declare that provincial hospitals are dangerously overcrowded.
As snow squalls continue to blanket southwestern Ontario, school boards in the London region announced the closure of all schools Thursday morning, and police are reporting closures and collisions across the area roads.
A Canadian citizen has died in Iran “at the hands of the Iranian authorities,” according to Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand.
On Boxing Day, Victoria Lethbridge and her partner took their dog and baby out for a morning walk in brand new snowshoes around the corner from their home in Hickman’s Harbour.
When a U.S. company made its data centre pitch to some concerned Saint John residents late last year, he called the city an untapped “gold mine” for artificial intelligence projects.