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Tech Freshman A Martial Arts World Champ
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NOVEMBER 17, 2003 -- Michigan Tech freshman Dany Peavey took a few days off last month. She returned to school with a gold, a silver and three bronze medals from the World Kick-Boxing/Karate Association (WKA) championships in Ireland.
Peavey, 18, has been practicing martial arts for nearly 14 years under the tutelage of her father, Michigan Tech alumnus Johnny Peavey, of Kingwood, Texas. While she is proficient in most styles, she earned her gold medal in the soft-style kata category. Soft-style refers to the Chinese martial art known as wusho (pronounce woo-shoo). "And kata is part of every type of martial art," she explains. "It's like a pattern of moves." Peavey captured her silver medal in freestyle musical kata, one bronze in point fighting, and two bronzes in team competition, team fighting and team kata.
Teams from 65 countries attended the championships, bringing with them 2,500 individual competitors. The US national team took home 41 medals; of them, the team from Johnny Peavey's school in Texas brought back 30. "One of my teammates, age 12, brought back seven medals," Ms. Peavey said, adding, "She's pretty good."
This is Ms. Peavey's third go-around at the WKA World Championships. "I like the friendships I get out of it, and I like going all over the world and competing," she says. In addition to Ireland, WKA events have drawn her to Austria and Italy.
She got her start in martial arts as a preschooler, when her father, then an Exxon engineer, opened a school virtually by accident. "I was working on an oil spill in Alaska, in charge of Kodiak operations," he recalls.
Community relations with the oil company were strained at best. Then Peavey agreed to start teaching martial arts. Inadvertently, he attained minor-hero status with local youngsters, thus stumbling into friendships with their previously hostile parents and improving Exxon's working relationship with the town exponentially.
As for four-year-old Dany, he welcomed her as a student, but tried to leave it at that. "When my kids decided to do this, all I asked them to do was see if they liked it," says Mr. Peavey, who has since abandoned engineering for a career teaching martial arts. "I don't want my children to be the heir apparent to me."
Though a student in her father's school, Kingwood Top Kick Karate, Dany Peavey gets specialized training from a wusho master in New York.
It's unusual for a competitor to do so well in so many different categories, her father says, from the soft-style kata to rough-and-tumble point fighting. "She's an awesome fighter," Mr. Peavey adds. "But what I was most proud of, when she went up to Tech, was that she had to train on her own."
His daughter credits Cheryl DePuydt, chair of MTU's physical education department, for making it possible. "She has been amazing," Ms. Peavey said. "She gave me the dance room every day."
Plus, John Adler, chair of the Department of Biological Sciences, gave her athletic leave to attend the championships, "and all my teachers were really understanding and let me make up everything," she said. "I probably wouldn't have been able to do it without all their support and help."
Next year, the WKA World Championships are in Switzerland. Does she plan to attend?
"I'd like to go," Ms. Peavey says cautiously. "But I'd like to concentrate on my schoolwork, too."
Whatever her decision, her father is on her side. "She's an amazing kid," he says. "She's very driven, she works really hard. And I'm very proud."
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