Now, he's an Olympian.

``It means a lot,'' said Roshii, a 19-year-old senior at Riverdale High School in metropolitan Atlanta. ``It's a dream I've had since I was 11 years old, and it finally came true.''

The odds were against Roshii making the 12-man U.S. Olympic boxing team. He just recently moved up a weight class, from 156 pounds, to his current weight of 165 (middleweight). He constantly fights boxers who are older, stronger and more experienced.

Being young also has made it tough for Roshii to earn respect, even though he's undefeated as a middleweight.

``He's tough,'' U.S. boxing coach Al Mitchell said. ``He's not a very big middleweight, but he stands in there against all those guys and dishes it out.''

Just to make the Olympic team, Roshii had to defeat 32-year-old Ronald Simms at the U.S. Box-offs in Augusta in April. Mr. Simms is a military policeman in the Air Force. He appeared in his first U.S. Championships when Roshii was a third-grader.

``I've had to prove myself all the time,'' Roshii said. ``I'm one of the youngest guys on the team, and nobody really expected me to be here except my parents and myself. A lot of people still consider me an outsider, and people say that I wasn't meant to be a middleweight. I don't pay much attention to what they think.''

He is one of four teen-age boxers on the Olympic team. Bantamweight Zahir Raheem, featherweight Floyd Mayweather and welterweight Fernando Vargas are the others.

Roshii and his family moved to Atlanta from Austin, Texas, about three years ago so he could train at the Evander Holyfield Arena, where the former world heavyweight champ trains and helps aspiring young boxers.

It's a long way from training in his dad's basement in Austin, where Roshii got his start in this sport.