On a Wednesday night in the Haskell Boxing Club, two men pound tall and heavy punching bags. In a back corner, a boxer spars with trainer Erik Riley. A few other boxers stand around the ring waiting their turn.

In the middle of the gym, Lucy Hardy and Cyrenity Hardy-Billy work with trainer Darren Jacobs, who is holding punch mitts.

Lucy is 9 years old. Cyrenity is 8.

The gym regulars are no longer fazed by the two little boxing girls. They’ve been working in the gym for the past two years, and everybody marvels at their athleticism.

Mother Melissa Hardy started taking Lucy and Cyrenity to the boxing club so they could learn to defend themselves as they grow up without a father involved in their lives.

Riley, who runs the boxing club three days a week, said he doesn’t usually train children younger than 8, but these girls were an exception because they pay attention, work hard and always have a positive attitude.

“It’s pretty cool having the little ones,” Jacobs said. “I enjoy working with the kids because they don’t come in with preconceived notions. …With them, you just show them what to do, and they do it. They still develop bad habits, but they correct them right away. It’s fun. I like working with them.”

Lucy is one of the top cross country runners in the state for her age, running about eight minutes per mile in 5- and 10-kilometer races. At the Double Road Race in Overland Park last year, she finished 239th out of 359 participants. She was the only girl younger than 18 in the race.

Cyrenity, whose nickname is Tank, also runs cross country, but she throws the harder punches in the gym.

“She always ate,” Hardy said. “She would never get full, so I started to give her table food at 3 months. She got real chunky, so we all called her Tank, and it’s always stuck with her since.”

Lucy and Tank weigh less than 60 pounds and are still too young even to put on their boxing gloves by themselves. They never fight at home and cried when they had to spar with each other during workouts.

That doesn’t mean they’re opposed to fighting other people in the ring.

Tank sparred with a 6-year-old boy at the Maximus Fitness and Wellness Club in Topeka in mid-April. It was three, one-minute rounds. Hardy keeps a video on her cellphone.

“When I’m doing mitts with them, you know, normally you kind of hit them, and I’ll hit them a little too hard and be like, ‘Oh, no! What am I doing?’ That’s once in a great while that I do that,” Jacobs said. “As far as their growth as fighters, being in the gym, is amazing from where they’re at now.”

Jacobs has twin boys, Marcus and Maurice, who started boxing at the gym when they were 9. They are now seniors at Free State High. The two young girls are a little more advanced than the boys were at the same age, but they remind Jacobs of his boys.

“It’s pretty neat watching them grow, watching them learn,” Jacobs said. “They’re really nice little kids. I like being around them.”

At the end of the workouts, Riley gets the boxers together for sprints, pushups and other drills. The two girls are usually the last ones still running at full speed by the end, to the surprise of nobody.

“They do everything together,” Hardy said. “Everything.”