To reduce harm or to produce harm. That is the question. Across UNCA resides a dearth of resources from which to learn from.
One such moment was a cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) teach-in, taught by UNCA students Summer Long and Grayson McCully.
“You can just save lives,” Summer said.
“Its usually about two inches, you want to make it fast enough to do a hundred beats per minute, or ‘HOT TO GO!’ by Chappell Roan,” Grayson demonstrated on the unblinking dummy.
“Shock advised. Do not touch the patient,” the AED machine said after Grayson put the AED patches on the right pectoral and left lower ribcage.
“I learned CPR in middle school,” Grayson said in the concrete and carpeted conference hall, usually used by the Red Cross to draw blood.
“If I decide to go psychology, I was thinking of doing social work; if I go health science I was thinking of doing nursing,” Grayson said.
It runs in the family. Grayson’s Grandma was a nurse when she was younger. Helping hands leading on to the next.
But what if you wanna beat someone up?
UNCA has a lovely club to learn the perfect execution of pugilistic bludgeoning techniques, the sweet catharsis of violence’s taste, exacted or endured – the UNCA striking and grappling club.
The club was practicing kicking and clinching combos, throwing in a knee while swimming for a better tie in an adversarial press and bind.
The first rule of striking and grappling club is accessibility, just drop in as you are.
“The only two sports around were football and basketball, and I wasn’t good at either of them,” Coach Declan Bell said.
He had gotten in a fight at school. As punishment, his mom made him take boxing.
“Even if I didn’t like boxing at first, I liked to win,” Coach Declan said.
Seeing him hop like a cricket and sting like a snake made that easy to believe.
The striking and grappling club has an exhibition match at Ultimate Gym in Charlotte on March 28. Several other University striking clubs are expected to attend, like Appalachian State.
Coach April Dubis can show you how to post up on your opponent and load up a punch then and there, or to step past the center line of the fellow about to face your fist as you pivot your toes into a hook.
“I started in 2019. I’ve mainly done boxing; it’s fun to chill here,” Coach April said.
Student and boxer Jaleal Jordan, towering and resoundingly level-headed, was no stranger to competition or physicality.
“If anything, I’m more calm about this,” Jordan said.
He had done track, football and wrestling in high school. He is currently training for a meet. Why not kill two birds with one boxing glove?
And yes, he was extremely calm about punching someone in the face or being punched in the face himself.
Vice president of the club, David Bahena-Gutierrez, had been doing MMA since middle school and his older brother had had a cage match.
“He took me and my nephews to the gym and from there we just started going at it,” Bahena-Gutierrez said.
Kyle Williams, an affable fellow and the coach of the jiu-jitsu club since after Hurricane Helene, has been practicing since 2010. He had gotten into jiu-jitsu and wrestling in school, watching UFC with his roommates and after a workmate he doubted.
After 16 years and earning a black belt under Jeff Roberts in 2022, he still has dreams of being some sort of coach, instructor or teacher of martial arts.
Currently, the grappling club does no gi jiu-jitsu, that is to say submission wrestling with no grabbable clothing like a heavy jacket. In his recent trainings, coach Kyle taught a variation of what in wrestling is called a peterson roll or granby, where the executor of the move is on their hands and knees with an opponent to their back. The executor takes the wrist of the opponent if it is on their waist, and rolls the opponent across the length of their shoulders while bracing against the ground for support. The executor of the move may then swim to be on top of the opponent or get control of the legs while doing the move.
He then taught a scissor reversal, which I was very bad at.
“Come fucking train,” Coach Kyle said.
