Charlie Sheehy won’t ever forget his first gym. Anyone who sees the Ring of Fire facility under the baseball bleachers at Crocker-Amazon Park in San Francisco won’t forget it, either.

“It’s a small space and has like a quarter of a ring,” said the 21-year-old Sheehy, who will be fighting for a place on the 2020 United States Olympic team next week in Lake Charles, Louisiana. “Only two sides have ropes, and the other two sides we used walls with padding on it.”

It’s the kind of ring that makes fighters or makes those who think they want to fight run for the safety of that baseball diamond. Sheehy, who learned his craft there from the age of nine to 12, saw plenty who made that run.

“Oh yeah, definitely,” he said. “There’s been like hundreds of them.”

Sheehy says it with a mix of amusement and pride, amusement that there were some not willing to test themselves in a postage stamp-sized “ring,” and pride that he survived his own trial by fire.

“I think that helped me develop my heart and my determination because in that ring you have to throw down,” he said. “If you don’t, you’re gonna get hurt. It taught me to keep fighting and be confident in myself and let my hands go.”

And yeah, when he finally got to fight in a full ring, he was the proverbial kid in a candy store.

“It was kind of funny because I never had a real ring for sparring,” he said. “And when I had my first couple of fights, I would just run around the ring because I never had that much space in sparring before.”

So what kept him around?

“Just the competition,” Sheehy said. “I’ve always been a very competitive person, even when I was a kid. In every sport I was playing, all I wanted to do was win.”

Often, though, his peers on the basketball court or baseball diamond didn’t share his same will to win or talent to compete. In boxing, he doesn’t have such worries.

“In boxing, it was all on me, and I really liked that.”

Since those early days in the little ring, Brisbane, California’s Sheehy has accumulated a laundry list of accolades, the most notable being three National Golden Gloves titles and four National PAL titles. Currently ranked fifth at 138 pounds in USA Boxing’s Elite Men’s Rankings, Sheehy is closing in on the goal he’s been chasing ever since he put on the gloves.

“When I first started, it was always the Olympics and then turn pro,” he said. “We thought about turning pro when I missed the age cut for 2016, but we decided to stick with it, and now that we’re right here and I’m in the trials, I’m one tournament from getting a spot and it’s very exciting. All the hard work is paying off.”

It’s an approach you don’t hear too often these days. Before, an Olympic berth was a guarantee for pro riches and if you happened to add a gold medal, you could write your own checks. But with the USA’s Olympic boxing program hitting some hard times over the last several years outside of some rare exceptions like gold winners Andre Ward and Claressa Shields, talented amateurs have often decided to go right to the pros. Sheehy decided to stay.

“It’s always been a dream of mine,” he said. “I’ve been around a lot of pros back home in San Francisco, and all of them said they wished they stayed amateur a little longer and they wished that they gave the Olympics a better shot. I always thought about that and I just don’t want to look back in my career and wish that I would have done something. So I think I made the right decision, especially now that it’s right here and I feel like I have a very good shot at it.”

Seven other 138-pounders, including 2018 Elite National Champion Keyshawn Davis and runner-up Dalis Kaleiopu, feel the same way, but if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be competing for that one spot to represent their country in Tokyo next year. Again, it comes down to competition, and Sheehy has become quite addicted to winning.

“The feeling of getting my hand raised has not changed since I was nine years old,” he said. “That feeling of hearing them saying the corner you’re in and your name, it’s indescribable. And I’d say winning the belts are probably my favorite thing to win, just because as a kid, I had seen all the pictures of the professionals wearing the belts, and I always wanted that.”

Does he know how many belts, trophies and medals he has?

“I probably have 25 belts, 50 trophies and I don’t even know how many medals I have,” he said. “I had them in my room for a very long time, but then they just started collecting a bunch of dust, so I ended up putting them in a box in my garage right now. I think my coach is gonna hang them up in the gym sooner or later.”

That will be some collection, especially if there’s some Olympic gold added next summer. It’s something Sheehy thinks of every time he hears “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“I think about that moment a lot,” he said. “Just standing on that gold medal podium and seeing my flag come down and seeing all my family in the stands, I can’t wait for it to come true.”