🥊 Neighborhood Spotlight: Kayo Boxing turns strangers into family, one round at a time

🦟 Suffolk health officials are watching for rabbit fever after a rough tick season

🏨 Patchogue's Hilton hotel just got a rooftop pool and a new owner

👶 A Long Island congresswoman wants to protect your right to IVF

You hear it before you see it, the steady thud of gloves on a heavy bag, someone laughing between rounds, a coach calling out combinations like he's known you for years. Walk into Kayo Boxing and within five minutes you understand why people who came in as strangers end up standing in each other's weddings.

Michael Corleone didn't plan on any of this. He was a cross-country runner in Puerto Rico back in 1989 when he wandered over to watch a boxing exhibition, got dared into the ring with no headgear by a guy who turned out to be the reigning amateur champion, and won anyway after getting distracted by a girl walking by and getting mad enough to throw the punches that mattered. That fight sent him home to his father, a clothing factory owner with 500 people on payroll and a reputation to protect, who was furious right up until he realized his son hadn't lost. From that accident came a real career, 38 professional boxing matches, 43 professional kickboxing matches, and a spot on the American kickboxing team competing in Europe.

When the fighting stopped, Michael didn't have a backup plan, so he grabbed a friend, pooled what money they had, and opened a gym. That was 22 and a half years ago, and he's been the one answering the phone, every call, every time, ever since. He trains everyone, 8 to 80, and he's especially proud of the work he does with autistic clients, some in their twenties and thirties, who've found the gym gives them a way to move through life that clicks.

Worth knowing: this isn't a gym you visit and forget. Michael's own son, now 22, is his head instructor and had his first fight at age eight. One client has lost more than 130 pounds in the last year and a half under his coaching. Membership runs $199 a month for anyone over 13, $180 for kids, and every class gets the same real instruction, nothing watered down for the younger students.

Michael is cautious about opening a second location, precisely because he doesn't want to lose the personal touch that built this place, the kind where he still answers his own phone mid-dinner if a student calls. For now, that means the best way in is still showing up and feeling it for yourself.

Follow along and find class times at https://www.instagram.com/kayoboxing/?hl=en or https://www.kayoboxing.com/.

Join us in welcoming Kayo Boxing to the neighborhood spotlight, a gym that's been turning strangers into family for over two decades, one round at a time.

Ticks already ruin enough backyard barbecues, and now Suffolk County health officials are flagging one more reason to check yourself after mowing the lawn. Three probable cases of tularemia, better known as rabbit fever, have turned up in the county so far this year, and doctors say this tick season has been unusually bad.

A Riverhead mom named Tracey Detmer knows it firsthand. She pulled a tick off her 9-year-old son's head after he'd been playing in the yard back in April, and within days he was running a 10-day fever with severe head and neck pain. It took multiple doctor visits before an infectious disease specialist finally landed on the diagnosis. He's still tired three months later.

The good news: tularemia isn't contagious person to person, there are great antibiotics to treat it, and only about 200 cases turn up nationwide each year. The harder question, according to Stony Brook Children's Hospital's Dr. Sharon Nachman, is why Long Island seems to be seeing more of it this year. Her advice stands regardless: long sleeves, long pants, and steer clear of sick or dead wild rabbits.

👉 Read more: https://abc7ny.com/post/probable-cases-rare-rabbit-fever-reported-suffolk-county/19608282/

Downtown Patchogue's long-awaited Hilton just leveled up. New plans reviewed at a Patchogue Village board meeting add a rooftop pool, presidential suites, a rooftop restaurant and bar, a spa, a first-floor cafe, and banquet space to what's rising on the site of the old bowling alley at 138 West Ave.

The hearing also brought a change in ownership. Yair and Heddy Yaish are now the sole owners of the project through their company, The Watch Hill Hotel Group, after previous partner Allon Avgi stepped away entirely. The hotel, once planned as a Tempo by Hilton, will now open under Hilton's boutique Tapestry Collection banner, with 109 guest rooms and 13 residential apartments.

Project managers hope to break ground in October, with an opening targeted for spring 2028. Not a bad excuse to start planning a rooftop staycation two towns over.

👉 Read more: https://greaterlongisland.com/patchogue-tapestry-hilton-hotel-ownership-change-amenities/

Nassau's own Congresswoman Laura Gillen (NY-04) was one of four lawmakers who introduced the Right to IVF Act in the House, aiming to make it easier and more affordable for families across the country to access in-vitro fertilization and other fertility treatments.

The 60-page bill would establish a nationwide right to access IVF, require coverage under the ACA, Medicare, Medicaid, and employer plans, and extend coverage to military families and veterans. "Families struggling to conceive go through indescribable heartbreak and stress," Gillen said. "The last thing they should worry about is legal challenges to IVF delaying or outright halting procedures."

A companion bill landed in the Senate the week before, backed by New York's own Chuck Schumer among others. Gillen's office says the effort now has 119 House cosponsors and 46 in the Senate, plus a welcome from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

👉 Read more: https://patch.com/new-york/longisland/gillen-brings-right-ivf-act-house-representatives

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