This was the finale of my fighting season.

It came during a boxing show at Monroeville's Palace Inn on the night of April Fool's Day. But my participation was no joke - at least, I didn't intend it to be.

Boxing has always been an intellectual problem for me. I've never figured out how to reconcile my belief in principles such as peace, civility and mutual respect with my attraction to the sport.

Growing up, I was always something of a pacifist, completely rejecting the portraits of masculinity that swaggered before my impressionable eyes - Tom Cruise flying a fighter jet, Sylvester Stallone slurring "Adrian."

Still, somewhere beneath my bookish, somewhat androgynous exterior, I always harbored this perverse idea that I could fight.

There was no empirical evidence to support this belief, of course.

The closest I ever came to blows was when, during the first grade, a fifth-grader rode up to me on his bike and menacingly called out: "Hey, kid, do you want to fight!"

"No," I replied, and quickly walked away.

See, he was bigger than I was.

I always thought that if I was paired up against someone my size, I would do just fine. ... Well, to be honest, I imagined that during a fair fight - in a boxing ring, with gloves and all the accoutrements of the sport - I would surprise the world and "kick butt."

I guess that's why I finally forced myself to try boxing, to test the limits of my aggression, to venture out into the land of the tough. My six-month journey to understand the deep, dark force that compels people to box bloodied my nose, blackened my eye and let me behold the terrible thrill of violence.

And when it all ended on that fateful Day of Fools in Monroeville, I reflected on how far I had come ... and how, in some ways, I was right back where I started.

Right back at the gym, asking Michelle Underwood of the Brookline Recreation Center about the club's storied boxing program. She described the club as well as the Western Pennsylvania Golden Gloves tournament, where I could compete as a "sub-novice," since I'd had no previous fights.

Then she eyed my body and asked how much I weighed.

"Hey Chuck!" she yelled, her voice racing past photos of fighters on the wall, beyond the newspaper clippings describing champions of yore and down into the bowels of the building.

Scattered around the gym, young men and boys pounded away at bags hung like slaughtered cows. Stuttering thuds from pear-shaped speed bags echoed throughout the cavern as did yells and jokes from adolescents playfully trading punches.

I stood by a wall.

Boxing coach Chuck Senft stood alone, too. As he surveyed the scene, his facial expression suggested toothache.

Chuck stands about 5 feet, 5 inches. His portly frame suggests his fighting days are behind him, but in running the recreation center he takes guff from no one. The only battles that trouble him are paperwork.

There's nothing all that photogenic about Chuck's wide, oft-broken nose and his roly-poly face, but in the gym he is a celebrity, the director and star of an annual boxing production that starts in Brookline and travels across the western half of Pennsylvania. The drama culminates with the regional Golden Gloves tournament, a perennial black and blue blossom of spring.

Chuck brought the boxing program to Brookline in 1957, a time when there was no other place for kids to box.

In the 1970's, he started training teens and adults and fielded a team that challenged the best neighborhood gyms in the city. The seasons culminated with the Golden Gloves finals at the Civic Arena, where up to 11,000 people would pay to watch the fights and newspaper headlines would herald a fighter as the "pride of Brookline."

The fans don't turn out in those numbers anymore. This year's Golden Gloves tournament barely earned a mention in the Post-Gazette.

Occassionally, Chuck acknowledges a change.

"At one time, parents would rather have their son go out for the boxing team," Chuck said.

But, in general, he contests the idea of boxing is a sport in decline.

The public opposition to the violence of boxing - to the knuckle-scraping masculinity it seems to promote and the menacing bravado exhibited by an ear-chomping Tyson or an obnoxious Camacho - all stems from a lack of appreciation for the amateurs, Chuck said.

The glamorous glitz of Vegas and the pros contrasts with the gym at Brookline, which doesn't even look like your classic hole-in-the-wall training ground. The most startling thing about it: There is no ring.

Imaginary boundaries limit pairs of boxers to a section of the gym floor - a coach watches all practice matches to make sure no one gets killed.

But on that first night of practice in October, I listened as Chuck told our group of about 30 boys and men, ages 10 to 38 - I was 25 at the time - that sparring would not begin for some time.

A quick look around the gym revealed many fighters, but few my size. It wasn't exactly a chatty group, but many of the boxers seemed to know one another from previous seasons and exchanged pleasantries. No one looked nervous - which made me a little bit more uneasy.

We would spend the first three months getting in shape and working on the basics, Chuck said.

Chuck's an old army man and, for that reason, runs boxing workouts in a military manner: All guys standing in a circle doing the same series of exercises every night.

The two-to-three hour routines started with a grueling set of calisthenics, followed by running, work on the heavy bags, ducking and footwork drills and, by January, sparring sessions. Somewhere in the midst of it all, Chuck always took time to lead us in "fundamentals."

With the music blaring, Chuck would stand at the center of the gym and call out punches. Spread around in a circle, my teammates and I would respond by shooting our fists right at him.

We would practice the jab, the 1-2, various jab-and-hook combinations and sundry techniques.

With every fake blow, some of the more experienced boxers in the club emitted noisy bursts of air, like little gusts of water from a whale's blow hole. Quickly, surely, their hands shot out and then immediately returned to their temples, as if the fist movements were governed by rubber bands.

Confusion governed my punches.

Some have an intuitive sense for how to throw a punch, I suppose. For me, it was a struggle to remember all the elements: keep your chin down, your fists tight, your elbows in and, as you punch, moving your fists and feet in unison, swivelling or bending at the waist as appropriate, darting in and out.

My progress was slow.

On one particularly painful November night, we had practiced a number of punches and combinations when we came to the deadly left jab, left hook, right uppercut sequence.

Chuck thundered, calling out "JAB! ... HOOK! ... UPPER! ... BACK!" and everywhere. Fists flew furiously.

Some nights during fundamentals I found myself either stumbling over my feet or just standing befuddled. That night, though, I had been doing a pretty good job of keeping up, successfully approximating the virile visions around me.

But, then, before I knew what happened, it all came crashing down.

I punched someone that night.

Myself.

Somehow, a right hook landed on my eye and scraped off a slit of skin from just below the brow - a glancing blow, I suppose.

When I retired to the hallway for a drink of water and dabbed at my eye with the shoulder of my shirt, it left a speck of blood.

This was not merely the first time I had ever punched myself. No, this was the first time I had ever punched anyone. And, beyond that, it was the first time I had ever been hit.

In one glorious moment, I was both bully and victim.

Returning to the gym, I continued the workout, confident no one noticed what had happened.

It was a different story at work the next day.

As colleagues saw the gash and asked what happened, they learned of my Golden Gloves training. Some questioned how I would fare in a match, where as many as four fists could hit my head.

Others amused themselves by divining nicknames for me - everything from "Prety Boy" and "Kid Snowbeck" to less charitable monikers:

"Chris the Ambivalent."

We started boxing three-minute rounds in mid-January and kept it up until the Golden Gloves tournaments in March.

Depending on the night, I could sometimes land punches with authority. And with the exception of one shot from a former Marine I sparred with, I learned I could take a punch.

Sometimes, in fact, I seemed a little too good at getting hit.

During one sparring session, Chuck went so far as to stop the action and get in my face, bellowing the chant I constantly heard him call from ringside: "Move your head! Don't let him hit you in the head! Why don't you move your head!"

Did he think I wanted to get hit?

This emphasis on the obvious was not unlike the way Chuck taught us to throw a single jab: "You jab and then you back out." he explained. "Why? Because, you hit the man, he's gonna be mad! He'll hit back."

Or when he helped us complete our forms to register with USA boxing: "If you come to a blank you can't fill out, don't fill it out."

But I had to be thankful for Chuck's words because, in truth, my lack of defense was a big weakness.

In February, I began sparring with Ryan, a 24-year old who weighed 133 pounds and stood a little taller than my 5-foot-6 frame.

Out first round together began with me trying to land left jabs and, when I failed, Ryan quickly countered with a series of solid punches right in my face.

From there it gets hazy.

I remember the bell ringing to end the first round and just as it sounded, Ryan landed a thunderous right on the side of my head.

I thought I'd been hit by a howitzer.

Before the end of the third round, Chuck offered me more advice about moving my head - "Move your head!" - and asked why, when I threw a left and a right, I never completed the combination with another left.

Fatigue was one answer. My lack of technique was another.

Chuck's constant reminders - and every punch I took - should have driven home the point that boxing is not just about "fighting tough." It's also about being cunning and precise and fighting smart.

Although I wasn't always a smart boxer, Chuck appreciated my perseverance.

One night, while chiding a younger boxer for not attending more workouts, Chuck grabbed me as I was walking past and suggested the teenager emulate my work ethic.

"He's like a Timex," Chuck said, a somewhat ambivalent comment considering the "takes a licking" part of the "keeps on ticking" slogan.

As the weeks passed, I became more comfortable with fighting, overcoming many of the fears that had plagued me before and after sparring sessions.

Whereas my first sparring match left me gasping for air and seeing in boxing a metaphor for the utter despair all of us face as we chart our lonely paths to the grave (it was a bad night), I became less melodramatic over time.

As we moved into our last month of practice, Chuck and the other coaches tried to motivate the group to work harder.

He stood with the team at ringside the night of April Fool's Day at the Palace Inn in Monroeville, where we were still hoping for victory, whatever form it might come in.

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Twelve Brookline boxers earned medals that night. As a group, we won the "Outstanding Team Trophy" award for Western Pennsylvania.

"Winner by walkover, Chris Snowbeck."

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I was champion.

There might be no better words to describe the ambiguous joy of my boxing experience than the concise trophy inscription: "SUB-NOVICE - WINNER."

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THE RING LEADER

Chuck Senft grew up on the North Side and started boxing when he was 13. People called him "Little Marciano" because he was shorter than most of his opponents and - like the heavyweight champion named Rocky - had to bull his way inside during fights.

And he still is.

Click here to learn more about Chuck Senft.