By Elizabeth Sims
Staff Writer

You are walking through a parking lot on a dark night. You are no more than 10 feet from your car when a strong hand grabs your wrist. In a panic, you try to pull your wrist away and run, but your attacker is too strong and you cannot go anywhere.

Would you know how to defend yourself?

The girls enrolled in Coppell High School’s girls self-defense class, taught by Bill Parker, are learning not only how to defend themselves but also gaining confidence in dealing with these situations.

“The idea was that a lot of girls go off to college, which is not always the safest place, and the young ladies haven’t done anything to learn how to defend themselves,” Parker said.

With the first self defense class offered last year, the course is still relatively new to the physical education department. However, Parker was reluctant to introduce the class because of restrictions and hindrances that come with teaching defensive skills at a high school level.

“I kicked around doing the class for a long time, and I did not want to deal with it at the high school level,” Parker said. “But I reconsidered because it would be very helpful for girls so that changed my attitude a little bit about it.”

Once the class was introduced, Parker began drawing from his 40 years of experience in judo and aikibudo in order to decide what he would teach in the course.

“I grew up with the philosophy that smaller people can beat bigger people. Everything we do is centered around self-defense, and there is a reason behind everything that we do,” Parker said. “I don’t go into the details completely because there is not time to get all of that into a semester and expect anybody to retain any of it. I focus on the basic things that students need to do.”

The idea of learning self-defense techniques has been a huge drawing point for junior and senior girls preparing to leave home and go to college.

“I took the class because I plan to go to school up north in a big city, and I know that my parents worry a lot so I wanted to be able to defend myself when I am in college,” junior Mackenzie Staber said. “Neither of my parents grew up in a big city, so I figured learning how to defend myself would make them more willing to let me go up north.”

With skill and repetition as the focus instead of strength and speed; the girls in the class are able to really concentrate on mastering the techniques.

“I like that we learn techniques that aren’t based on speed and strength because I don’t really have either of those,” Staber said. “And I like the techniques we learn where you can get away from somebody who is grabbing at you because if you can master those then it is game, set, match.”

In addition to learning how to defend themselves, the girls also learn how to use an attacker’s speed and strength to their advantage.

“We have learned a lot of cool moves, and all of them focus on using the attacker’s strength against them because obviously they are going to be stronger than you,” senior Mallory Osigian said. “We have learned a lot about balance and weight distribution. We went over all the most vulnerable areas on an attacker, and that was really easy to remember and really helped me out.”

Even though they are only three weeks into the class, the students already feel confident in their abilities.

“I feel like I know how to take care of myself, and I am more confident because of that,” Osigian said. “I know some self-defense other than my mace.”

Though the class is new and only a semester long, Parker sees value in the techniques and skills his students learn that could help if a situation were ever to arise in the future.

“This class is not developing competitors, it is all about self-defense,” Parker said. “Ultimately I hope the students never have to use any of it, but I know that one day these young ladies might need something and hopefully this helps.”