Next to her, Mike Carey — soon to be 10 — slowly girded himself in his bright yellow pads.
Everyone else in the workout room at the Dayton Kroc Center on North Keowee Street the other evening backed off to the walls as Malia and Mike approached Grandmaster Roger Haines, who, after a moment’s pause, asked them:
“What does it take to be a champion?”
Malia, standing off to Haines’ left, did not answer. She stood there quietly. Haines asked again and again she was silent, and that’s when he realized.
“She doesn’t hear me,” he said softly.
Trying to help his partner, Mike moved in front of Malia and from beneath his headgear said, “Malia, he wants to know what it takes to be a champion.’ ”
When she didn’t answer, he pulled off his headgear and she did, too, so she could lean her right ear near his mouth to hear better.
Moments before this, her sideline transformation had included shedding her glasses and the round, green earrings her mom had made her wear this night — “so she looks more like a girlie-girl than the tommy boy she is,” her dad, Malik, said with a grin — and then gently removing the pink-tinted hearing aid from her right ear.
Maila was born deaf in her left ear and with just over 50-percent hearing in her right.
She reads lips perfectly, but in this situation she had not been able to see Haines’ mouth, nor Mike’s, which was obscured by his helmet.
But as she quickly showed, actions sometimes do speak louder than words. And this time she delivered them with some painful punctuation.
Less than a minute into the sparring session, she pirouetted quickly and delivered a forceful, spinning wheel kick to Mike’s exposed ribs. The blow left him doubled over and trying to catch his breath.
Haines came over, held his shoulders and said gently, “Okay, shake it off. You’re all right, Mike. Shake it off.”
After a couple of minutes, Mike, a promising younger fighter who is just back training after suffering a broken ankle that sidelined him almost two months ago — “my sister kicked me for real at home,” he said with a shrug — was beginning to connect with his own blows.
And that’s when Malia landed a perfect pump side kick. The first part of it came in soft, but right behind it came one that caught him flush in the helmeted face.
He doubled over again, this time in pain, and after a couple of minutes, Haines came over and called off the session.
And if Malia had not answered the champion question with all that, then she certainly did with an impressive collection of trophies that had been set up in the corner of the room. Malik, who had brought them from home for a post-workout photo shoot, had needed a van.
There were a few plaques and 13 trophies, including a pair that dwarfed the 4-foot-7 Malia. She had gotten them last month when she surprised everybody and won both the weapons and form competitions of her age group at the 46th annual Battle of Atlanta national tournament. She also finished third in fighting.
Haines said that got her the national, novice division ranking she will take to Washington D.C., this weekend, where she’ll compete in the US Capitol Classics.
“I couldn’t be more proud of her,” Malik said. “When she first started all this some of the other boys she went against tried to be rough with her and she’d back off. I had to have a little father-daughter talk and tell her, ‘Look, you have to be rough right back.’
“One of the first times she did, I remember a boy getting mad and trying to take it beyond karate and he wanted to throw haymakers. None of that happens anymore.”
As Haines put it: “She’s just one of the guys.”
Mike, who is her regular sparring partner and her karate friend, took it a little further … once he caught his breath:
“She’s pretty good.”
Scary discovery
“With the technology they have now, they told us right when Malia was born that she had a profound hearing loss,” Rhonda Mize, Malia’s mom, remembered. “I didn’t believe it at first, but then we started putting her in a room and we’d go around the corner and call her name and she didn’t respond.
“When we held her, we noticed she’d turn her head to one side trying to hear — that’s when it became clear.”
Rhonda said the cochlea — the spiral-shaped tube of the inner ear that includes the nerve endings essential for hearing — wasn’t formed all the way in her daughter’s left ear and that resulted in the total loss of hearing in that ear. The problem was significant, but not as complete in her right.
“It was scary at first,” Rhonda said. “I hadn’t experienced that with my first child (son Re-Shawn is now 17), so I became very, very protective of Malia.”
Malik said he didn’t know how to react either: “I was heart-broken at first and didn’t want to accept it. But after a while I realized a lot of kids are born with hearing problems. And Malia showed us right away, she was going to tackle it head-on. She wasn’t going to let it hold her back.”
As an infant she was fitted with a hearing aid in her right ear and has worn one since.
Malik said his wife pushed her to learn sign language and read lips.
“I never signed with her, I just made her talk to me,” he said. “To me she was going to be just like every other kid.”
That’s the attitude Malia now fully embraces. “I just ignore it (her deafness),” she said. “I pretty much pretend I’m like a normal person. I don’t know of anything I can’t do.”
Rhonda said she remembers only one time when her daughter questioned her situation: “She said, ‘Why do I have to wear hearing aids?’ And I said, ‘Well, here’s one good thing. You know two languages.’ ”
Malia signs well enough that she teaches it to other kids at the academic day camp, Camp IQ, her mom runs every summer for children ages 5-12.
“It’s part of our curriculum and Malia teaches the kids over 100 words by the end of the summer,” Rhonda said.
Malia is about to start seventh grade at Horace Mann Montessori , an elementary school with hearing specialists.
“Her teacher can wear a microphone-like device around her neck and Malia has a little piece on the back of her hearing aid that picks up the voice so it sounds like the teacher is talking right to her,” Rhonda explained. “She also has an interpreter who sits beside her and can sign what’s being said.”
Malik said his daughter doesn’t always like that: “She doesn’t want to stand out from the other kids. She doesn’t use her hearing loss as an excuse. She doesn’t even like talking about it.”
Rhonda agreed: “If it was up to her, you’d never know it. She’s very outgoing. Nothing holds her back.
“She’s good in basketball and she loves to praise dance. She performs with a little group at church (Dixon United Methodist). And with her karate now, I‘m going to get Malik to build some shelves in her room for all the trophies.”
‘She never gives up’
Some six years ago, Malik — who owns his own business, M&M Remodeling and Installation — was looking for an activity to do with Re-Shawn and Malia.
“I don’t care too much for sports, but I wanted to do something active,” he said.
He found karate through his good friend Mark Hill, an accomplished competitor who now teaches the martial art at the Wesley Community Center on Delphos Avenue with his son, Marlon Weaver, also quite a talent.
Both Mark and Marlon were taught, in part, by Haines, who along with being a karate grandmaster, has been a police officer for 28 years in the Cincinnati suburb of Woodlawn.
Haines first got involved in the sport while he was a teenager headed to Roth High School in the 1960s. Eventually he became a teacher and he said his tutelage has helped produce seven national or world champions.
One of those celebrated former students is Aisha Thornton, a Meadowdale High grad who lives in Florida and whose karate exploits have made her a YouTube hit.
Over the years Haines said he’s had thousands of students who, rather than national acclaim, were left with real reward in their everyday lives.
“This keeps kids away from peer pressure, drugs, violence and crime,” he said. “They can use martial arts as a plateau to make a difference in the community.”
Some 20 years ago he partnered with Steve Allen and they launched the S.W.A.T. (Special Winning Attitude Team) program. It’s part of the City of Dayton’s recreation program and operates primarily out of the Northwest Recreation Center at Princeton Park.
Although he and Re-Shawn eventually dropped out of karate, Malik made sure Malia stuck with it: “I wanted her always to be able to take care of herself and have confidence in herself. I know how kids can be. They’ll pick at you if you have long hair, anything.”
While Malia struggled at first (“she said she didn’t want to know how to fight,” her dad remembered), Hill said he told Malik, “She’ll be OK. She’s got what it takes to be good.’”
Weaver, who like his dad has also taught Malia, agreed: “She has excellent potential. She never uses her deafness as a crutch. The bumps and bruises and hard times, nothing’s too hard for her. She never gives up. And she’s got the family support she needs.”
Now, Malia — who has an orange belt and looks at Thornton as one of her role models — trains four days a week at the Northwest Center, Wesley Center and occasionally at the Kroc. She’s competed in tournaments in Louisville, Indianapolis, Detroit and Atlanta.
While she wears her hearing aid during forms and individual weapons — she uses a wooden shaft called a bo — competitions, she takes it out for fighting.
“It costs over $900 and we don’t want to risk breaking it,” Malik said. “But I think there’s an NFL player who is deaf and has a special hearing aid in his helmet.
He’s correct, in part. Derrick Coleman, a running back for the Super Bowl-champion Seattle Seahawks and a former UCLA star, wears his normal hearing aid covered by two skull caps beneath his helmet.
Prior to Malia’s matches, her dad or Haines tells the person officiating about her hearing loss so they don’t simply rely on verbal commands.
“It all works out,” Malik said.
That was never more the case than last month in Atlanta — well, except for one thing.
Malik rented a mid-sized car for the trip and that was fine on the way down from Dayton. But on the way back, besides Rhonda, Malia, Malia’s cousin Aleasia and himself, Malik had to find room for those two five-foot championship trophies and another one for third place.
“Oh my God, I didn’t know if we were all going to fit,” Rhonda said. “At first Malik was going to go to Walmart and get some kind of tool to take the trophies apart. Finally, he just decided to lay them down the middle of the car from the front seat to back. Because he was driving they were leaned over my way and I was pressed between them and the window for the whole (eight-hour) trip.“
As they head to Washington, D.C., this week, one thing is changing.
Because his daughter has definitely answered that “champion” question, Malik plans on renting a bigger car.
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