Earlier this week on Levack and Goz the show was joined by Siena Professor and author Todd Snyder. Professor Snyder's new book, "12 Rounds in Lo's Gym: Boxing and Manhood in Appalachia" is available now. "Lo" is in reference to Todd Snyder's father in which the subject of the book is based on. Snyder offered some of the background of his father in the interview below.

"My father his name was Mike “Low” Snyder, Lo was his nickname around town. He was a really good high school football player, he got the nickname “Low” because he would hit the holes low, he was a short guy like me, and he was also an amateur boxer. And the rumor was when he fought he stayed low to the ground, kind of like Joe Frazier kind of style. So you know, I grew up I was Low’s kid. So the book itself is about his series of makeshift boxing gyms that he had in West Virginia, that’s the state I grew up in. We’re talking about the lower levels of boxing. Our first boxing gym was located in the back of my mother’s beauty shop.  So you know, imagine that you got a makeshift boxing gym that smells like Paul Mitchell hair products. And we also had a gym in the back of a Baptist Church, at a community center. They had bought a building that used to be a bar, and they put my father’s gym upstairs as a community outreach project. So the book itself is about the stories of the fighters in that boxing gym, and of course my relationship to my father, growing up in a pretty tough part of Appalachia, coal country.”

To listen to the entire interview, click on the link below.

 

Would you want to be a student in Professor Snyder's class? Let us know below.

 

 

 

Todd Snyder
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