Sports
High Point firefighter and kickboxer
A: About 18 years. Basically all my life. I like excitement. I like
helping people. Where else can you do all this and get paid for it,
too?
Q: What's it like knowing you've had a hand in saving someone's
life?
A: We get down sometimes about the low pay, but once you do CPR
on somebody and bring them back, there's no amount of money that can
compensate you for what you get out of that. A woman I didn't even
know said, "Don't you work at Station 10? You saved my life." She'd
taken too much of the wrong medication and we had to bust her car
up, get her out and do CPR on her right there in the parking lot. I
left feeling pretty good that day.
Q: What's one of the strangest call you've ever responded to?
A: It was a call about a stabbing. When we got there, the guy was
sitting there talking to us. I thought he had a comb in his hair,
but it was actually one of those small butcher knives stuck in his
head. The handle had broke off of it. He wasn't bleeding or anything
and it didn't hurt his brain. It just went into his skull.
Q: So kickboxing helps you stay fit for your job?
A: It helps me meet my physical requirements here. We have to put
on the heavy protective equipment. It keeps your body heat in, and
then you're in there fighting the fire with the heat bearing down on
you. The more fit you are and the less fatigued you are, the less
likely you are to make mistakes
Q: What led you to the sport?
A: I'd gotten hurt several years ago at a jiujitsu competition. I just
got beat really bad.
Q: How bad?
A: I had some nerve damage in my face. After that, I sat around feeling
sorry for myself. In a period of three years, my health got to the point
where they were ready to put me on high blood pressure medicine. My blood
sugar was borderline diabetic and I was developing asthma, so they put me on
inhalers. Then, I thought, "Man, this just isn't me."
Q: So you went back to the gym?
A: The effort to improve was gone. My health was deteriorating, so I
started working out, but it seemed like nothing I did was working. By then I
didn't have anything to go back to because jiujitsu had stopped in this
area, but I'd heard about the kickboxing events, so I went to talk to Cheryl
Nance (of The Venue) about training. She introduced me to (trainer and
kickboxer) Ronnie Copeland.
Q: Did you want to compete or just train?
A: I was so far out of shape, Cheryl didn't want me to, but I got in there
anyway (laughing).
Q: (Laughing) How did that go?
A: I would get tired, but Ronnie saw that I was kind of tough. He told me
if I really wanted to do it, I could. So we had our strategy. He said, "If
you start to get beat on pretty bad, we'll throw in the towel." That was our
strategy (laughing).
Q: And your health?
A: I would literally throw two punches and be out of breath. Ronnie got
me on a special diet, training and eating right. Within two months, I'd lost
weight, my blood pressure went back down to better than normal and there was
no asthma. The results were so fast. Before I'd tried to lose weight for a
year.
Q: Tell me about your first fight.
A: When I would hit the guy, he would just kind of run from me. In the
second fight, the guy got in (the ring) and he was ripped up. I get in there
and he is beating me to death. I mean, he was pounding me. I grabbed him,
spun him to the ground and made sure I got on top of him. Then I laid there
and rested a little bit (laughing). They were telling me to throw an
uppercut and I didn't know how to throw a proper uppercut, but I did and he
just got dazed and I won a national title.
Q: I'm sure that did wonders for your confidence.
A: My self-esteem was just down in the pits. I guess from where I was
before -- doing all the jiujitsu competitions and being fairly successful to
being someone that needed an inhaler to breathe. That was really bad for me.
Kickboxing got my mind back to where it needed to be. I ended up taking
second in the world championships in Chicago last year.
Q: At age 39?
A: And everybody was against it because of my age, but now they see what
it did for me. People think there's something wrong with me mentally, like,
"If you enjoy getting beat on something's got to be wrong with you." But
it's not like that. I don't mind getting hit, just when it hurts really bad.
Q: Most of your competitors -- are they half your age?
A: Most are in their 20s, but the most effective ones are closer to my
age. The guy that took first place at the world championship was also 39 at
the time. I know the other fighters thought that one of their guys would
win, but it backfired on them. We beat all of their guys and then he beat me
(laughing). If I had to lose, I was glad it was to him.
Q: And I bet you rubbed it in to the younger guys.
A: Just a little bit.
-- Tarah Holland