For many seniors, dual credit is a usual preparation for college, but when several seniors, such as Courtney DuVal, Caroline Appleby, Marisa Lizana, Sky Chambers, and Riley Bevan, got the chance to take martial arts with their professor, they were a little surprised, but ready for the challenge.

“Our Econ professor, Mrs. Wright, does martial arts at this place called Kingdom Fighting and she invited us to try it for free,” senior Courtney DuVal said.

Although it seems like it all was just for fun, Wright had motives behind inviting the students.

“The reason I invited the kids to the class is to give them different experiences, and one of the students in the class was inquiring about how to live a more experienced life, so when opportunities present themselves, you have to jump on them, and I thought this would be an exciting opportunity to give them a new experience,” economy professor Vivian Wright said.

The students took the opportunity and went into the the class thinking it would be an easy thing, but they were in for a surprise.

“We all went to Muay Thai with her and it was a ton of fun, but it was also a lot more difficult than we expected!” DuVal said.

The girls having fun in a normally guy dominated sport was just what Wright had wanted.

“I wanted to expose the women in the class to fighting, which I never thought I would enjoy, which I do, and I think they did as well,” Wright said. “I just wanted to go and give them an opportunity and provide an environment they would feel comfortable in going, because I was there.”

Muay Thai is a combat sport created from the muay martial arts in Thailand that involves fists, elbows, knees, shins, and feet. This unexpected experience led the seniors to find an unforeseen way to have fun.

“We thought it was so cool to try something new and challenging, and we might even go back again!” DuVal said.

In the future, Wright hopes to encourage her students to try different activities and become a more well rounded person by inviting them to different opportunities.

“I would always want to invite them to different opportunities, it may not always be at the fight class, but there’s different exposures everywhere, there are different meetings, different presentations at the school, so yes I would view it as an ongoing thing,” Wright said. “It makes their education and their experiences a little more robust.”

Wright’s efforts to connect with the students and to help make them better do not go unnoticed.

“That experience was really cool,” senior Sky Chambers said. “It showed us that the teacher was not only a teacher, but she had different activities, and she’s just opening up and trying to show us that she’s cool instead of just a college economics teacher.”