BEHIND EVERY athlete who has reached the pinnacle of his or her sport is a story littered with the many triumphs, frustrations and sacrifices that years’ worth of preparation has wrought.
This was the case for former Lady Trackster and current Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) World Champion Meggie Ochoa (BS MGT ’12). Her lifetime’s worth of athletic experience has most recently bagged her the gold medal in the BJJ World Championships held last May 30 in Long Beach, California. But unlike most athletes, her road to gold wasn’t as clear-cut as most people would expect it to be.
How it all began
Ochoa only truly began to get into martial arts after graduating from the Ateneo last 2012. The management alumni initially wanted to try and compete in the field of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), but the failure to find opponents that fit and match her build was what eventually led her to Jiu Jitsu.
“I had trouble finding opponents in my weight class,” says Ochoa. “I just wanted to be able to compete but opponents would just back out left and right. It was frustrating. MMA left me heartbroken.”
Shortly after that, Ochoa chose to shift from MMA to Jiu Jitsu after joining Atos Philippines—a BJJ organization that cultivates homegrown talent. With a walking weight of about 105 pounds, Ochoa learned that it would be much easier for her to find opponents to compete with in Jiu Jitsu. True enough, she participated in her first match not long after she began training and never really looked back.
“A month into training, I already got to compete. Ever since then, I just kept competing. It grew into an addiction I couldn’t stop,” said Ochoa.
Gaining momentum
As she progressed into training and won matches left and right, Ochoa doesn’t deny that the desire to compete in the World Championships was an idea that was slowly forming at the back of her mind. “It has always been a dream to join, because it’s the World Championships. It is the most prestigious championship [in the sport],” says Ochoa.
Unlike other major athletic competitions such as the Olympics and the World Cup however, the Jiu Jitsu World Championships is not an invitational tournament—meaning that it remains open to everyone. Therefore, much more is demanded from hopeful contenders. Aspiring athletes need to have the confidence and capacity to compete at such a high level, but more importantly, they had to have resources to fund the necessary preparations that will be needed to participate in the contest.
As simple and trivial as these two may seem, they are things that not all athletes are fortunate enough to have at the same time during their careers. Ochoa, however, seemed pre-destined to be the exception.
She gained the first of the two earlier during the year when she joined the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu International Competition held sometime last February in the Philippines.
“Somehow, when I competed in that competition, I just felt ready,” said Ochoa. “I couldn’t completely determine how but I just felt ready.”
The road to the latter, on the other hand, was something not even a lifetime’s worth of training and competition could have prepared her for.
Completing the formula
The moment she realized and was certain that she was ready to chase after her dream of becoming a world champion at all costs, she turned to current teammate and the Lady Judokas’ team captain, Dany Ty for help. It was Ty who then brought up and suggested the idea of crowd funding to Ochoa.
Crowd funding, to put simply, is the use of the Internet to gather all necessary resources that will be needed to achieve a specific cause or advocacy with the help of random netizens. Though hesitant at first, Ochoa decided to give it a shot after seeing that the website, makeachamp.com, has been known to send past Olympians to the Olympics.
Much to her surprise, Ochoa had already attracted enough attention to raise $USD1000 (around P43,470) within just 24 hours of launching her campaign. Although she did not reach her goal of $USD 4,380 (around P190,399), the majority of the donations that were given to her in person were enough to bring her to the World Championships.
According to Ochoa, it was the incredible response to her advocacy that pushed her to become a much better fighter than she already was. After all, the journey to gold was no longer all hers, as it had already become the journey of everyone who has shown her support through donations or a simple message online.
“That experience, like I always say in my posts [on Facebook], made it a shared journey,” said Ochoa. “It’s really a shared journey with me and everyone else who supported; everyone that believes in what I believe in. It makes you want to win more.”[blockquote author=”Meggie Ochoa, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Champion” pull=”pullright”]It’s really a shared journey with me and everyone else who supported; everyone that believes in what I believe in. It makes you want to win more.[/blockquote]
She further adds, “Lalo kang nagutom na manalo kasi alam mo na hindi lang para sayo yung laban. (It makes you hungrier to win because you know the fight isn’t just for you.)”
Starting a new chapter
After months of rigorous preparation that required her to train at least two to three times a day, approximately $USD4,300 (around P186,921) and only about a week’s worth of international training, Ochoa’s journey was worth it. Together with the thousands of hearts she has captured, she secured the Gold medal for the Female White Belt Rooster category in the International Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Championships.
She dominated both of her matches and was crowned a World Champion with the lopsided scores of seven-zero and ten-zero respectively.
“Feeling the support of everyone just made me feel confident,” said Ochoa. “I had no reason to doubt when I was there.”
Looking back at it all, Ochoa still finds the entire experience so surreal. Now that she is back on the daily grind, she does not plan to put to waste the respect and influence she knows she now carries.
Also a budding entrepreneur, she has taken a step back into training and is now focusing on embarking in a new tour guide campaign, prooPH inc. She describes her business as the “microcawesome”—finding what is awesome in the micro. Through prooPH inc., Ochoa hopes to spread awareness on the unrecognized and overlooked areas of the country and hopefully, help bring its social, environmental and economic needs to light.
Ochoa, a true champion, is now set to make waves beyond that of the mat.
