Recruit’s Boxing Death Won’t Halt Marine Bouts

As they train to fight the nation’s battles, Marines will keep fighting each other - despite the death of a teenage recruit last month in a boot camp boxing match.

While mourning the loss of recruit Michael Cecil, Marine officials said the mandatory boxing program was too valuable a tool in the preparation of warriors to be shelved.

Cecil’s parents, Tessi and Donald Cecil of New Haven, Ky., said they were still awaiting the final report on their son’s death, but they did not fault the Marines.

“He was so determined to join the Marines,” Tessie Cecil said. “He was doing what he wanted to do, and I supported his decision.”

The parents said that in memory of their son, they planned to attend graduation ceremonies for Michael’s platoon at the Parris Island, S.C., training base next month.

Cecil, 19, went into a coma from a blow to the head on Feb. 7 during “combat hitting skills” instruction at Parris Island.

On Feb. 11, Cecil was taken off life support, and he died. Curt Copeland, the coroner for Beaufort County, S.C., said last Friday that Cecil’s death had been ruled accidental and was the result of a “traumatic head injury suffered during training.”

The training requires recruits to wear 16-ounce gloves, head and groin protection and mouthpieces and to box with an opponent of similar size and weight in a bout of three rounds.

At Parris Island, Maj. Rick Long said Cecil was the first recruit to suffer serious injury since the Marines began the boxing regimen in 1989. Long also said the Marines have no plans to change the program.

Even advocates of abolishing professional and amateur boxing said they might make an exception for the military.

In boxing, “somebody is going to get hurt badly, no question about it - up to and including death,” said Dr. George Lundberg of the American Medical Association. But “if you’re a Marine, you’re being trained to be a killer. I suppose it might be justified.”

The Marine Corps is the only branch of the military that has mandatory boxing for recruits, but the service academies of the Army, Navy and Air Force all have boxing programs. The Naval Academy at Annapolis, Md., is unique in that both men and women are required to take boxing.

Spokesmen for the Air Force and Naval academies said there have been no serious injuries in their programs.