Lakeville, MA: A Neighbouring School, Twenty Years of Fighters
Lakeville is the closest of the towns south of us, and it is home to a martial arts school that has been doing this since 1999. This page is not a pitch to leave it.
Sensei John Marando founded Lakeville MMA and still runs it. He has trained with our team for more than twenty years, and in that time he has done the thing that a good school does for a good neighbour: when one of his students wanted to compete, he sent them to train with fighters. Not sold them a programme, not kept them at home in a class they had outgrown. Sent them. There are people on our mat right now who came through that door first.
Two rooms, one pipeline
Marty Navis came to us from Lakeville MMA and fought a run of fights for this gym. Jack Congdon started there and went on to work with the pro and amateur teams, and he is now 7-2 as a professional welterweight. Anthony Leate, Mike Talbot and Connor Matthews came through the same route and did the same thing: learned to stand and move in Lakeville, then spent their competitive years in a room full of fighters. That is not a rival school losing students. That is two schools doing different jobs properly, and the fighter is the one who benefits.
If you are in Lakeville and you want a class minutes from your house, John Marando has been teaching at Lakeville MMA since 1999. If you are in Lakeville and you want to fight, the road to Raynham is fifteen minutes and there is a seat in the van.
How far is the gym from Lakeville?
Raynham is the gym that serves Lakeville: 9.2 miles and about 15 minutes from Lakeville Town Hall on Bedford Street, measured on the roads in clear traffic. Bedford Street north, then Harding Street, then west on Route 44 into Raynham. Canton is 26.7 miles and 39 minutes, which is not a commute anybody makes twice a week, so this is one of the towns where the answer is genuinely one gym rather than two.
From the other end of town the number moves: from Apponequet Regional High School on Howland Road it is 12.0 miles and about 18 minutes, because Lakeville is long and the school sits south of the centre. Either way it is a short drive on roads you already use.
That fifteen minutes covers a lot. The 6:00 AM no-gi classes are Raynham only. So is Friday night. So is Sunday morning, which starts with women’s jiu-jitsu at nine and finishes with open mat.
What Lakeville gets out of the drive
A room built for people who intend to use it. Adult jiu-jitsu every weekday evening and both weekend mornings, kickboxing including a basics class for total beginners, no-gi at 6:00 AM three days a week and 10:00 AM five days a week, and a Sunday women’s class taught by Tracey Balaschi. Kids from three years old up, split into Tiny Ninjas, Vipers and Cobras so a seven-year-old is never the smallest person in a room full of teenagers. Everything is members-only, so the people you drill with in week three are the same people you drill with in year three.
Lakeville itself
The town is named for water and mostly made of it: 36 square miles in total and more than six of those square miles are water, in ponds, called ponds locally however big they get. Assawompset, Long Pond, Great Quittacas and Little Quittacas sit at the middle of the town’s geography, and the town has only been Lakeville since it was incorporated on 13 May 1853. Long before that, in 1675, John Sassamon’s body was found under the ice on Assawompset, the killing that led to King Philip’s War, so these ponds have a longer history than most towns in the county.
Lakeville has shared a school district with Freetown since 1959. Apponequet Regional High School on Howland Road serves both towns, which means the Lakers’ teams draw from two towns’ worth of kids. The commuter rail stop for the whole area is in Lakeville too, on Commercial Drive, with 769 parking spaces, so you can get to Boston from Lakeville without driving yourself.
How to start
Call 508-219-0418 and book a free intro appointment. It runs about fifteen minutes: a look at the room, how classes and membership work, what you want out of it, then a short lesson on the mat. Bring shorts and a T-shirt. No experience needed and nothing to buy before you come in.
Contact the Raynham gym
500 South Street West, Raynham, MA 02767, on Route 44 just off Route 24. 508-219-0418. Doors are open 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM Monday to Wednesday, from 6:00 AM on Tuesday and Thursday, 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM Friday, 9:00 AM to noon Saturday, and 8:00 AM to noon Sunday. The full timetable is on the Raynham adult schedule and the Raynham kids schedule, and classes shift around holidays, so check your date.