March 24, 2008

Adam Jolly, the Pied Piper of punch

By Roy Mitchell

CENTRE — Six-year-old Zac Mitchell bowed his blonde locks, involuntarily wrinkled his face, and began to cry. A “misbehavior mark” had just been discovered in the first grader's elementary school agenda.

“Why are you crying,” asked Zac's father.

Without ceasing his sobbing, Zac spoke through his sniffles: “Because I don't want you to tell Mr. Jolly!”

Holding a reverence rivaling that of parents, preachers, and Pied Pipers, local TaeKwondo instructor Adam Jolly not only carries considerable clout with little Zac, but with 50 or more other students in Cherokee County and vicinity. Yet Jolly, this adored adult, is barely a grown-up himself. He is a 21-year-old college student.



Instructor Adam Jolly holds a piece of wood for TaeKwondo student Zachary Vise to kick it in
two as fellow student Zac Mitchell looks on during the 2007Centre Fall Festival.


While other male college students idle their time playing penny poker or assembling pyramids of beer cans, Jolly owns and runs his own business, Black Belt TaeKwondo Academy in Centre. Located at 1012 Main Street near La Cabana, the Black Belt TaeKwondo Academy serves students five nights a week.

Twenty or more of the students are younger than ten, early elementary school children captivated by Jolly's jovial spell of kicks, punches, and “Hi-yah!” shrieks. They are babes bound to booster seats, but able to break boards with their fists and feet. Tots barely able to tie their shoes can count to over 50 in Korean and precisely execute their “forms,” which may consist of 24, 28, or even 38 memorized moves.

“If you want to deal with kids, think, act, and talk like a kid,” explained Jolly, who will graduate from Jacksonville State University either in the fall or next spring. “I have to be (a disciplinarian) with them while making it fun and energetic.”

His students exhibit an uncommon core of discipline. Before entering the instruction room, students must bow and enter without their shoes. Before class, they recite the five tenants of TaeKwondo, and students end every response to Mr. Jolly with, “Sir.”

Jolly, though young by any business world standards, is a TaeKwondo veteran.
“I grew up here in Centre,” he said. “TaeKwondo was a present my parents got me when I was five.”

He earned a black belt by age eight, though his family had to drive to Rainbow City when the school in Centre closed down. Eventually, Jolly's father learned the art and opened Centre TaeKwondo. Though that business didn't make it, a family friend opened up another TaeKwondo at the old Centre YMCA.

After the YMCA closed, First Baptist Church of Centre's ROC offered a place for TaeKwondo training. Eventually the instruction moved to the Odyssey Health Spa.
“When my friend and instructor there decided he was going to throw in the towel, I took up the school,” Jolly explained.

With the help of assistants Malinda Wood, Fermin Mendoza, and Kyle Rochester, Jolly moved to the West Main Street location in May 2007.

Growing and weathering each change of venue, Adam's martial arts progressed, too.
“I have been to around 50 tournaments, and I have bunches of first place trophies. I beat a couple of grand champions and won second in the grand championship once.”

At 13, Adam endured a training phase which included at least three years of instructor training.

“During this phase, you are nothing more than your instructor's personal assistant,” he said. “You must do whatever they say.”

At training camp, potential instructors were awakened at midnight for arduous workouts while everyone else slept, leaving only a few hours of rest each night.

At Jolly's final testing for his instructor certification, he inadvertently became the center of attention. He was performing forms for the judges in a brand new, expensive TaeKwondo uniform.

“I was in the middle of one of the many forms, and the drawstring came untied,” he said. “I couldn't pull up my pants or my techniques would be wrong, and I would fail the entire testing.”

By bending extra with his knees during the required forms, he managed to keep his pants from completely falling to the floor.

“I had to do approximately 15 minutes of work with pants falling down,” he said. “By the end, everyone had noticed.”

Anyone who happens to wander by the windows of Jolly's academy in Centre will inevitably behold a room full of diminutive darters, eyes riveted, entranced upon the tall, smiling figure at the front of the room.

Jolly is the center of attention.