Gohmann, a 57-year-old mother of two grown daughters who works at the Community Blood Center in downtown Dayton, lost her husband Todd, a former Alter High School and Georgetown College football star, to non-Hodgkin lymphoma in November.
In the two years he fought the cancer, he was treated locally by Dr. Mark Romer, at the James Cancer Hospital in Columbus and at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
Hamm, a 47-year-old mother of two from Huber Heights, is an antiques dealer and also works at Drake’s Gym on Fifth Street. She has lost over 100 pounds. Just a few years ago she carried 250 pounds on her 5-foot-3 frame. Now she weighs 143.
To put that in sartorial terms, she went from a size 24 dress to a size 8.
The women sat down at Drake’s the other night after their training sessions and discussed some of the trials and tribulations they’ve faced. Eventually the conversation took on some fistic terms.
“I think there are a lot of great lessons you can take into your life from the sport of boxing,” Hamm said. “When you get hit, you can’t get all flustered and quit. It’s the same when you get hit in life. And life is gonna hit you, but you can’t just turn away and give up.”
That’s when Gohmann chimed in: “You gotta go the distance.”
Hamm smiled and nodded: “That’s right! Go the distance. Through all this in here, we learn we can go out into life and take care of business.”
More than cardio
Gohmann attended the all-girls St. Joseph Commercial High School in Dayton and when that closed, she finished at Chaminade Julienne. She played some tennis, volleyball and basketball in high school and said she has been working out ever since.
“I learned about Drake’s from Go! magazine about six years ago,” she said. “A girlfriend of mine used to come to Saturday morning classes and I thought it’d be interesting. Soon I was coming on Saturday, during my lunch breaks and after work, too.
“I did it mainly for the cardio work and the strength, but it’s become a lot more than that.
“Losing my husband has been tough, especially at night when you finally come home to relax and now you’re now doing it by yourself.
“I’m finding the best way to cope is just to keep busy. I have a lot of support from my children, my family and friends and especially at the gym here. When you come in here it’s like you’re with family.
“I can walk in tired or have a headache or just not feel the best, but then I start to work out and those feelings just disappear. You get that energy and it lifts everything.”
‘Like night and day’
Hamm first came to Drake’s some five years ago when she’d bring her son, Joey, in to box.
“I was 250 pounds and I’d just stand around and watch, but I never dreamed of doing this myself,” she said. “But it became a health thing. The doctor was like, ‘It’s not a question if you’re going to get diabetes, it’s just when.’
“That really made me think. I had to do something. I didn’t want to live that way, so I made a decision to change right then and there and I forged through it after that.”
To show how far she’s come, she pulled out her cell phone and thumbed through her photos, stopping on the picture of a corpulent woman who looked nothing like her.
“I found a personal trainer and did it all through working out and weightlifting and changing my diet,” she said. “I had no surgeries, nothing like that.
“I stopped drinking pop — Pepsi had been like coffee to me — and basically I’ve stuck to lean protein meats and vegetables and good carbohydrates.
“It’s the hardest thing I ever did in my life, but it’s the best thing, too. Everything is better. I can move better, my knees don’t hurt. It’s like night and day.”
In dropping well over 100 pounds, she’s had to get a completely different wardrobe, though she said she hung on to a reminder:
“I kept one pair of pants from back then. I just have to look at them and I know I never want to go back to that.
“It’s been like shedding a whole other person. The old Shannan died and a completely different one took her place. On the backside of that, though, I had to discover who the new one was.”
Once much of the weight came off, she began power-lifting and set a state record. But after a while she said the weights got to be too much and she searched for something different:
“I wanted something physical and that’s when I remembered Drake’s.”
She said she ended up finding a place for fitness … and much more:
“When you walk through the gym doors, at least for me, everything that’s going on outside stays there. In here, none of that bothers me. I have great friends here who are supportive. I think about boxing and I realize it’s a good place to be.”
For a good cause
This is the first time John Drake, who runs Drake’s Downtown Gym, has put on his annual show at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds Coliseum.
But the place has housed decades of sporting events.
The Dayton Flyers played their games at the Coliseum from 1923 to 1950, which includes the first three years of Coach Tom Blackburn’s push to bring the program into the modern era. Several Dayton high schools, semi-pro and industrial league teams also played there.
The Coliseum has hosted Golden Gloves boxing tournaments, pro wrestling, MMA shows and the roller derby.
Although the “Knockout” venue has changed, the charitable bent of the show has not. This year funds will go to the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery and the Parkinson’s Foundation of Dayton.
Tickets for the 10-bout show — which features a variety of people from the community who have other jobs, use boxing for fitness and, for the most part, are making their first competitive venture into the ring — are $20 at the door and $15 in advance.
Gohmann said when Drake came through the gym looking for volunteers to fight, she finally agreed, not only because it was for a good cause, but for personal reasons:
“When I agreed, my husband was in the final stages of his cancer. I thought if he went through all his treatment and never complained once, I certainly could get knocked around a bit and do this. I’m fighting for cancer (awareness).”
Hamm nodded in approval:
“I think this can be an inspiration for women our age to do something like this. When your kids grow up, it’s not the end of your life. We’re still functioning women who can take on all kinds of new things. It’s awesome.”
As they’ve prepped for the fight, both women have gotten sponsors for their training. Gohmann’s brother-in-law, who ran G & F Tool with her husband, is backing her and Hamm said Sonoco Products, where her husband works, is helping her.
While this is billed as an exhibition, both women admit they have kept an eye on each other to see how the opposition has been doing in training.
At 5-foot-1, Gohmann gives away two inches and about 20 pounds to Hamm.
“I’m shorter than her, so I’ll have to figure out a way to get to her,” she said. “Shannan has some awesome punches and more of a killer instinct than I do.”
Hamm shook her head: “Barb’s tough in there.”
Both said they know what it feels like to get hit flush in the face.
“Oh yeah, I was sparring with Ashley White, she’s in the main event Saturday, and she got me good,” Hamm said as she added a Brady Bunch reference.
“It was my Marcia Brady moment. I jumped back right in the ring and went ‘Oh my nose! … My nose!’ But it was OK.”
Gohmann laughed: “Ashley’s the one who popped me in the nose, too. It bled a little bit, but that was it.”
She said this is the “scariest” thing she’s done in her life, not just the physical part, but in getting up in front of a crowd.
“I’m not one to seek the spotlight,” she said quietly. “I’ll have a lot of family and friends there and I just hope I do a good job in the ring for myself and everybody else. I want to look halfway decent and put up a good fight.”
She’s already done that.
Both women have.
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