Like most mothers, Camille DeLoach requires her six children to do household chores to earn an allowance. Do you know what the least favorite chore in the house is?
Fighting mom. Literally.
Mom is a nine-time world karate champ, which means she's always looking for convenient sparring partners. Fortunately, she's got six of them right there in her house, not counting her 300-pound husband.
Kid: "Mom, can I have $5?"
Camille: "OK, you'll have to work for a half-hour tonight."
Every night they clear the furniture out of the family room. The kids, working at a rate of $10 per hour, hold the punching bag (and stare at the big screen TV) while mom punches away at them. Then they put on the chest protectors and spar with mom, which gets their full attention.
"Mom!" they complain when she hits them in the face.
For the DeLoaches, fighting mom is as routine as taking out the trash. Friends call the DeLoach children on the phone at night, and they're told, "I can't talk now; I gotta fight my mom."
One day, Camille's oldest son, Josh, complained, "Gosh, Mom, I wish you were normal." But she's not. At the recent International Women's Taekwondo Open Championships, she won two gold medals — in "forms" and "creative forms" (Karate's version of the floor routine in gymnastics, with a mix of karate moves and gymnastics, set to music — picture Jackie Chan after 10 cups of coffee) and one silver medal in sparring, which is a nice name for fighting.
She beat two women from Japan (but not at the same time) and one from China, and in the process she split an opponent's lip, which got blood all over Camille's gee — "and I didn't even get points for it," she says. She lost the gold medal match 2-1, although she's not sure how since she kicked her opponent in the face a couple of times.
By the way, did we mention Camille is 44 years old and is 5-foot-1, 110 pounds. In Korea, she fought two 18-year-olds and two 22-year-olds. She's got kids that old.
"They look at me, and think they've got an easy fight," she says.
She didn't even take up the sport until she was 32 years old, while most of her Asian rivals began in grade school. She was a cheerleader at Utah State, BYU and Weber State, and before that, she was an all-around athlete at Roy High School (she was named the school's female MVP — the male MVP went to a guy named Jim McMahon). She married Dennis DeLoach, a former standout linebacker for Utah State who became a dentist, moved into a spacious house in Sandy and began to raise her family.
She discovered karate when she enrolled her kids in a city rec class. Josh eventually began entering tournaments. The family got so bored killing time between Josh's matches that they decided they might as well take up the sport themselves.
Camille "went crazy with it" and earned her black belt at the same time Josh did. Her pretty face and petite build belie a gritty, tough fighter who has taken her lumps and dished them out, too. There's a picture in the family room of Camille after a match — she's got cotton stuffed up her nose to staunch the blood flow.
During her career, she has had a broken nose, broken ribs, sprained ankles and don't even try to count all the black eyes — nobody even asks about them anymore. She's had a half-dozen teeth knocked out or chipped. During a sparring session at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, she dropped her hands and turned her back on a male sparring partner, thinking they were finished, and got kicked in the face, knocking four new crowns off her teeth.
Every black belt should have a dentist for a husband. "He's getting tired of fixing my teeth," she says. "He put a lot of work into those crowns."
Two years ago, she switched from Kenpo — which allows the use of hands and feet — to Taekwondo — feet only — for a new challenge. Almost immediately she began entering national-class competitions for one simple reason: her age.
"I don't have much time," she says.
While trying to care for her kids ranging in age from 6 to 19 and managing a career, Camille's daily routine is an aerobic exercise in itself — up at 6, go for a four-mile run, dash off to train with her kenpo karate master or to a weightlifting session, return home to clean the house, report for a training session with her Taekwondo master, then drive to her tumbling class or a speed session at The Orthopedic Specialty Hospital, return home to watch her soap opera ("General Hospital"), pick up the kids at school, race off to instruct her own karate classes — The DeLoach Academy of Martial Arts — return home to fix dinner, help with homework, pick up the kids from practice and spar in the family room .
Somewhere in there, Camille is teaching herself the Korean language, attends a midweek scripture study class, takes dance classes and teaches a Mormon primary class. She has run three marathons and likes rock climbing.
The only thing she doesn't do is sleep much (5-6 hours a night).
"I really like to stay busy," she says. "I'm really bored on weekends."
Fortunately, she's got six sparring partners in the house.
E-MAIL: drob@desnews.com