WILMINGTON — The first time Terah Hieber stepped on the mat to practice Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu she was a natural, easily getting the hang of difficult grapples and hold.
She was 6 years old.
“I had already tried soccer and gymnastics,” Hieber said. “But as soon as I tried Jiu-Jitsu, I knew it was the thing I wanted to do.”
Since that day, four years ago, Hieber has trained almost constantly. She has had to: Jiu-Jitsu does not have many female competitors – and especially not 11-year-olds – and so Hieber frequently faces off against older, heavier opponents, many of them boys. In fact, in competition, Hieber has only faced three girls. At practice, Hieber grapples with grown men and women. According to her mother, Kristen Hieber, “Terah’s fearless, and she’ll wipe the floor with them.”
One has to ask: are teenage boys – to say nothing of adults – really giving their all fighting a pre-teen girl?
“Oh, they’re not letting up because I’m a girl,” Hieber said. “You can see it in their faces when they lose.”
Hieber said her opponents often seem to think they’ll defeat her easily; being underestimated doesn’t bother her though – in fact, she seems to enjoy it.
“I just smile and think, ‘I’m going to beat you,’” Hieber said.
Eugene Cabuna, an experienced practitioner of Jiu-Jistu, said the martial art rewards agility and thoughtfulness over brute strength.
“It’s not about beating up your opponent, or landing painful blows,” Cabuna said. “It’s about leverage and control, so someone Terah’s size can – if they have skill – subdue a larger person. It’s about skill, not strength or violence. That’s why they call it the gentle art.”
Hieber may have some natural talent for the gentle art, but she spends hours a day honing it. In addition to training other children, she also helps teach an adult class (not to mention a Muay Thai class). The classes alone run several hours, Monday through Thursday. After that, Hieber often stays to train, her mother said.
“Believe me this is all free choice,” Kristen Hieber said. “The only thing we’ve ever made Terah do is go home for the night. She’d live here if she could.”
Terah Hieber added, “if we could just put a sleeping bag on the couch, I could sleep here.”
To make time for all this training, the Hiebers homeschool Terah. That’s fine by her.
“School wastes a lot time, I can get everything done in like three hours,” she said. “I love it, because there’s more time for training, but also time to read.”
According to Kristen Hieber, Terah is a voracious reader, already taking on some college-level texts (to say nothing of chemistry and other subjects above her grade level). Like any parent, Kristen Hieber was concerned about her daughter’s ability to keep up. Now, the family’s only concern is Terah running out of bookshelf space.
Jiu-jitsu is a family affair for the Hiebers: Terah’s mother and father and both involved, and her 8-year-old brother has been practicing for several years. But Terah isn’t following in her family’s footsteps; they’re following in hers.
“We all got involved because of Terah,” Kristen Hieber said.
Terah Hieber said she plans to pursue Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as far as she can; when she turns 19, she plans to start the long process of earning a coral belt. That means earning and holding a black belt for 30 years.
“This is what I want to do, today, tomorrow, for 30 years,” she said.
Watching Terah Hieber “wipe the floor” with grown men, it possible to forget she is still also an 11-year-old girl. But, in some ways, the exceptional young martial artist is a lot like other girls her age: she loves “Harry Potter” and other fantasy series, and is especially fond of mermaids.
“That’s a good way of describing Terah,” Kristen Hieber said. “She loves Jiu-Jitsu, she loves mermaids. That’s why we call her ‘Jiu-Jitsu mermaid,’ and that’s the hash-tag we use on all her YouTube videos.”
Next up for Terah Hieber is a chance to compete at the International Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Federation, held in Las Vegas this July. The Hiebers are running a GoFundMe to help cover the expenses of travel, lodging, registration and the addition training Terah will undergo before the competition. In Vegas, she’ll face her toughest competition to date.
“She’ll compete against the best of the best,” said Kristen Hieber. “Terah wouldn’t want it any other way.”
#jiujitsumermaid
