Tyrieshia and Antoine Douglas hope to make 2012 Olympics a shared redemption tale

A young woman in a summer dress and gold sandals stood at the edge of the boxing ring in Alexandria, intently watching Anacostia High graduate Antoine Douglas spar. In the midst of preparations for the 2012 U.S. Olympic boxing trials, Douglas landed hard and suddenly on the ropes in front of her.

She didn’t flinch, even though his sparring partner inadvertently stepped on the leather purse she had placed at the edge of the mat.

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When the workout concluded, the woman, wearing a cluster of copper bracelets on one wrist, a thick gold band on another, and chunky earrings, approached Douglas, 18. He grinned. She offered a critique.

“You have to keep your hands up,” Tyrieshia Douglas, 22, told her brother.

She, too, is a boxer with Olympic hopes.

In the last weekend of June, the pair became the only brother and sister to qualify for the 2012 Olympic trials in boxing, which for men begin July 31 in Mobile, Ala., and for women take place next February. They have fought together for years, in boxing rings and outside of them, the sport providing a kind of sanctuary after years of bouncing around the District’s foster care system.

As they have risen in national prominence, they’ve come to realize that the discipline that satisfied their yearning for belonging and hope might also offer a ticket to the 2012 Summer Games in London.

“You always have to look back,” said Tyrieshia, who works at a day-care center in the District but lives and trains in Baltimore. “We got this far. . . . Us becoming Olympians, coming from what we came from, think of how many lives we could change.”

A call to action

Both recall their not-so-distant youth in hazy outlines and with occasionally wet eyes. A police car with flashing lights came on a snowy day well more than a decade ago. Officers removed the pair along with two other siblings from the home of their birth mother. An older brother, Devon Douglas, now 27; a middle brother, Ronte Douglas, now 21; and Tyrieshia and Antoine landed at the house of an aunt.

They moved in and out of foster homes, passed around by friends and distant relatives, for several years, eventually winding up in a group home. That’s when Petrick Washington, a second cousin, stepped in. An escalator repairman who was then married, Washington heard the children would be split up. He told authorities he wanted to adopt the three youngest, he said. The eldest, Devon, had moved in with a basketball coach.

“They wanted me to take one,” Washington said. “I said no. They said, “What about two?’ ” I said, ‘You have to give ’em all to me.’ ”

When the adoption was complete, the trio learned their journey through a tangle of foster homes had reached an end. Tyrieshia, then 14, was in the ninth grade; Antoine was about 11. Washington would be their father, friend and, eventually, boxing coach. He vowed he would teach them discipline, something he learned years before in a boxing ring. Washington, who hadn’t boxed since his childhood, returned to the sport for the sake of his new kids.

“I couldn’t even do a sit-up when I first started,” Antoine said. “It was just me and my brother. Petrick told us to get in the car and we had no idea where we were going.”