Maddison Van Der Mark, a U.S. Army veteran and Rutgers University student, poses for a photograph inside a boxing ring at New Jersey Give a Kid a Dream at Gleason’s Gym Jersey Shore in Long Branch, N.J., on May 8, 2023. The nonprofit organization helps at-risk youth through boxing and life lessons. (Julian Leshay, TNS/nj.com)
(Tribune News Service) — Maddison Van Der Mark was looking for a fight.
The young Army veteran discovered the hard way that civilian life might not be for her. She lived alone in a New Brunswick, N.J., apartment, angry and isolated.
Then she moved back home with her parents after her first year at Rutgers University.
That only made things worse.
“It’s hard to explain, but the depression of being alone consumed me,” the 24-year old Belmar, N.J., native said. “Getting out of bed was so hard. Just being a productive member of society felt like a daunting task.”
Van Der Mark missed the structure of Army life. The camaraderie of being part of a unit. The clear sense of purpose. Then she lost a beloved mentor who died in a tragic accident.
She was just 23 years old. And she was lost.
“My family was not tolerating how I was living,” she said. “They were just like, ‘You’re angry. You have such a short fuse. You’re just not yourself.’ … and at that time I was struggling with school.”
Then she found boxing.
It was the fight Van Der Mark was looking for — a way to reconcile the frustration and anger and loneliness. About a year later, she began passing on the benefits of her refuge to at-risk Jersey Shore kids.
It was a new start and a new path, one that has brought her peace and a purpose: connecting with dozens of teens and fellow veterans with their own struggles.
“When I had a bad day I went and boxed,” the 2017 Wall High School graduate said. “It gave me a sense of discipline. It gave me guidance, and it created a sense of community I lost when I left the military. I fell in love with it, and eventually it led me down a million different paths.”
On a Monday in early May, Van Der Mark was on the second floor of a converted Long Branch warehouse. Gleason’s Gym is part sanctuary and part proving ground, a haven for committed boxers and kids looking for community, discipline and a positive outlet.
The gym feels like an old-school boxing arena: high ceilings and hardwood floors giving off a musky smell, with boxing paraphernalia and mirrored walls surrounding the ring.
Van Der Mark stood centerstage as she put on a pair of sparring gloves, threw up her hands and coached a group of 20 teenagers, part of New Jersey Give a Kid a Dream, a nonprofit supporting at-risk kids by teaching Olympic-style boxing.
“Maddison came to us feeling the same way a lot of these kids have felt, with a lot of anger and dealing with a lot of issues. This place has changed her life,” said Alicia Furman, a New Jersey Give a Kid a Dream board member.
“What Maddison is so good at is she understands firsthand that these kids have no consistency in their lives.”
She was there herself not so long ago.
Maddison Van Der Mark shadowboxes inside a boxing ring at New Jersey Give a Kid a Dream at Gleason’s Gym Jersey Shore in Long Branch, N.J., on May 8, 2023. (Julian Leshay, TNS/nj.com)
A new path
Maddison Van Der Mark ignored the pain.
The athletic and enthusiastic soldier battled through boot camp at Fort Leonard Ward in Missouri. A 12-mile run through the Ozarks would have been grueling enough, but imagine treading through the rocky terrain lugging 50 pounds of gear on your 5-foot-6-inch frame.
Oh, and on two cracked hips, she said.
“One of them was from overcompensating,” Van Der Mark said. “The other was from the weight bearing on my hips. Carrying a lot of weight on my back when I wasn’t ready for that.”
The pain intensified as basic training unfolded, she said, but she “just kept pushing through” it until graduation. Then she finally saw a doctor.
“It got to the point where I couldn’t walk any more,” she said. “My entire body shut down.”
After her fractured hips healed, her next stop was Fort Campbell, Ky., where she trained with the 101st Airborne. Then it was off to Grafenwoehr, Germany, where she was part of a unit charged with overseeing long-range rocket launchers. The unit was there to deter Russia, Van Der Mark said.
At age 20, she was promoted to sergeant, tasked with leading 30 soldiers.
“Fortunately, I was never in combat, but I was a young sergeant at 20 years old, and I didn’t have much experience,” she said. “I learned a lot by trial and error.”
She spent four years in the Army, signing an initial three-year contract and committing to an additional four. Sensing she needed a college degree for career advancement, however, Van Der Mark took advantage of a program that allows enlisted soldiers to enroll in the college of their choice on a Reserve Officers’ Training Corps scholarship.
She landed at Rutgers.
As a 22-year-old freshman in the 2020-21 school year, Van Der Mark lived by herself in an apartment with her golden retriever. It was during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and campus was largely shut down. Her depression intensified in November 2020 when she learned one of her mentors, staff sergeant Brendan Adams, died in a motorcycle accident in Clarksville, Tenn.
“He was one of the huge people in my life at the time,” Van Der Mark said. “When you lose someone like that and you can see parts of him in you, it’s a very hard thing to process.”
Her feelings of isolation and depression only worsened when she moved back home with her parents in May 2021, she said.
Angry at the world and missing the strict rhythms of military life, little things would infuriate her. People who were late. Casually rude shoppers in a supermarket checkout line. Family members. Her mom suggested she talk to someone about her mental health, but she declined.
Then her older brother Joe suggested she try martial arts to release some of those pent-up feelings. She went down the street to a boxing gym.
It “was actually the scariest thing in the world because you’re trying something new,” Van Der Mark said. “I just fell in love with it. It became something I did six days a week. It was my grounding factor.
“When I had a bad day I went and boxed.”
About a year later, she walked into Gleason’s Gym for the first time.
Maddison Van Der Mark, center, helps coach boxing along with Jackie Atkins, right, National Boxing Hall of Fame inductee, for New Jersey Give a Kid a Dream at Gleason’s Gym Jersey Shore in Long Branch, N.J., on May 8, 2023. (Julian Leshay, TNS/nj.com)
A family of the canvas
“Murder She Wrote” blared over the speakers, filling the gym.
Van Der Mark barked inspirational instructions over the melodic hook of the 1992 reggae hit, driving a pair of teenagers like the sergeant she was in Germany.
“When you feel fatigued,” she shouted above the Chaka Demus & Pliers song, “just find a way to keep your hands up and never stop fighting.”
The 45-minute workout ended, and Van Der Mark gave a high-five to the 13-year-old girls who just sparred.
“You’re friends, right?” she said. “That’s cool. Now you’re family, too.”
Boxing was already an outlet for Van Der Mark. Then it became a purpose: helping kids who were as lost as she was.
“It’s a very aggressive sport, but it’s also very calming,” she said.
Van Der Mark applied for a Rutgers internship program that connects undergraduate students with nonprofit organizations. The Rutgers Summer Service Initiative is a public service program that offers a $5,000 stipend for students to intern for a minimum of 150 hours.
The aspiring teacher opted for a nonprofit close to home, walking into Gleason’s Gym for the first time last June.
“Most of the kids you see here are local, from Long Branch, and the idea is to have them have a place to go to after school so they don’t make a decision that could change the course of their life,” Furman said.
Long Branch is largely known as a vibrant and rejuvenated beach community, but 21.4% of the city’s residents have an income below the poverty line, according to 2021 U.S. census data — well above the state and national averages.
The gym, founded by New Jersey Boxing Hall of Famer Jacklyn Atkins, also teaches fitness and health while providing mentorship in academic development and social etiquette.
Known in the gym as “Coach Jackie,” Atkins wanted to expose at-risk kids to some of the things she was privileged to have when she was growing up in Red Bank, N.J. — including a love of boxing honed at her local Police Athletic League gym.
The former champion became an executive at AT&T and developed computer telephone software before reviving the Long Branch PAL boxing program by introducing youth martial arts.
“I didn’t know I was privileged,” said Atkins, the Women’s 152-pound National Golden Gloves champion, the Ringside World Championship titleholder at 141 and 152 pounds, and the first women’s boxing coach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. “I played sports. I rode horses. But then I started realizing some of my cousins didn’t have as much. They didn’t have those opportunities.
“When I started working with the kids from the PAL, that’s when it really started to set in, the differences, as far as children being at risk, not knowing there’s this whole big world out there.”
In 2014, she partnered with the owners of the famed Gleason’s Gym of Brooklyn, N.Y., to open a branch in Long Branch.
“Every kid that walks in here, we know they’ve been through a lot already in life,” said Atkins, who founded New Jersey Give a Kid a Dream as both a boxing outlet and a safe space. “We want them to know if they get knocked down, whether it’s in the ring or in the real world, they have to get back up.”
Atkins put Van Der Mark to the test last summer, soon after her internship began. Her first task was to lead a group of teenagers through the gym’s version of bootcamp: a four-day, 16-hour training regimen beginning at 6 a.m. with a run on the Long Branch boardwalk.
“Maddison led the pack,” Atkins said.
Just ask Corina Harris, a 16-year-old sophomore at Atlantic City High School.
“She not only taught me boxing, she made me feel comfortable around everybody else,” Harris said. “She told me I could talk to her whenever I needed, and if I ever needed a shoulder to cry on, she’d be there.”
Van Der Mark was there for Harris last September when her father Corey died at the age of 49. Harris did not want to share details.
“When we went to pay our condolences, we found out she was living in a house with no furniture,” Atkins said. “This kid was sleeping on her floor. So for Christmas we gathered a bunch of furniture, and we furnished her apartment. She has her own bedroom now, her own bed.
“Maddison was part of the home renovation, and I just remember the smile on her face when Corina walked through the door and said, ‘This is the best Christmas ever.’”
Harris will be among more than 50 boxers competing June 24 in the seventh annual Battle of the Beach in Long Branch, a sanctioned amateur boxing event for kids. She aspires to be a professional boxer, but she might just follow in Van Der Mark’s footsteps before she gets paid to fight. She is considering boxing for West Point.
“I’ve talked with Maddison about Army life and what that would be like for me,” Harris said. “She’s been an amazing, helpful person to me.”
Van Der Mark has gotten plenty out of it herself. Her internship was a 120-hour requirement scheduled to end last August.
“I’ve racked up over 700 hours of volunteer service, and I’m still there,” Van Der Mark said last month just before teaching a class at the gym.
Furman watched Van Der Mark interact with the teens from the side of the ring and smiled.
“That’s Maddison in a nutshell,” Furman said. “She probably started her day with a run in the woods for four hours doing ROTC and Army stuff. But she knows she has to keep being here because if the kids keep seeing her, they’ll trust her.
“Stay here long enough, and you’ll see these kids running up the stairs with their math papers, ‘Look Maddison, I got an A.’ I think that feeds her soul like nothing else.”
Van Der Mark has earned plenty of A’s herself at Rutgers. She is on track to graduate next May.
In addition to serving in the Women’s Leadership Scholars Certificate program, Van Der Mark created Rutgers’ Veterans Tutoring Veterans, a program that provides writing assistance to military-affiliated students.
A typical day during her recently completed spring semester included an 8-mile “rough march” with the Rutgers’ ROTC beginning at 5 a.m., followed by class, internship work and coaching at the Long Branch boxing gym. She would cap her day by tutoring from 10 to 11 p.m.
“Maddison’s very structured — that probably comes from her military training — but she’s also no nonsense,” Atkins said. “She connects with the kids here like nobody else.”
Van Der Mark was rewarded for her volunteer efforts last month by being named a Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation winner. The prestigious award established by Congress came with a $30,000 scholarship for up to three years of graduate school after she earns her Rutgers degree.
It also came with a special shoutout.
“In all she has done as a sergeant in the U.S. Army, as a Rutgers student, and as one of the first Rutgers Summer Service interns, Maddison illuminates what it means to put people and public service foremost in life,” Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway said.
Van Der Mark, a history major with a minor in military science, is on course to graduate next year. She still owes four more years of service to the Army — “They’re paying for school, and it’s the Army, so nothing is free,” she said with a laugh — but hopes to put her scholarship to good use in a master’s program at Princeton University.
“This scholarship means the world because it’ll allow me to pursue my graduate degree and then transition into teaching — hopefully U.S. history,” she said. “My goal is to eventually work my way up to the policy level.
“But I want to work with the kids in the classroom first.”
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