Champion for Charity Jill Lawrie ready to take a punch for MacKids — in fact, she already has!
By Jeff Hicks
CAMBRIDGE —
Keep your hands up. Always.
Or get punched in the face.
That’s a free boxing lesson to keep in mind as The Brawl at Tapestry Hall unfolds on April 4 with 20 local business leaders and community-minded professionals raising $606,000 — and counting — for McMaster Children’s Hospital.
Just ask Jill Lawrie, Senior Manager, Communications and Advocacy, for United Way Waterloo Region. She’ll tell you.
Elbows up may be politically popular.
Hands up, as her coaches say, is timelessly essential in boxing.
“It’s a good lesson,” said Lawrie, one of Mandy Bujold’s Champions for Charity, long recovered from getting bopped on the nose during sparring training about six weeks ago.
“It was not a major thing.”
But it was a tad awkward for the first-time fighter — and daughter of the former chief of staff at Cambridge Memorial Hospital — to show up at a family dinner with a feint shiner and slightly swollen schnozzle.
Her dad Mike poked her proboscis just like she was one of the junior hockey players he examined as team doctor for the Cambridge Winter Hawks decades ago.
Five for fighting and a visit from Doc Mike.
“Seems OK,” he said.
The examination was over and dinner was served.
“It was a little bit embarrassing,” the single mother of two conceded.
Lawrie, it seems, doesn’t easily get her nose, uh, out of joint.
She’s five-foot-nine with a six-foot attitude.
She’s closing in on her personal fundraising goal of $12,000 for MacKids.
She once played pro basketball in the Alps for a Swiss B League team. She left the hoops loop after a few weeks to globe-hop with friends.
Travelling? Yes, you can call Lawrie for that passport infraction.
She always wanted more than Cambridge after growing up in West Galt. She got more.
Her parents, Mike and Louise, were always supportive of her path.
She’s lived in the Bahamas, Panama, Paris, London, Frankfurt and Toronto. She went to school at McGill in Montreal. She even ran a coffee farm for a season outside Panama City in Boquete.
“I love coffee,” Lawrie said. “I kind of like mid-roast. I prefer to buy Latin American when I can. There’s still that connection.”
But Covid brought her home to be close to family amid a flurry of life changes.
Her kids have the same fighting spirit.
Lily, an aspiring vet at 16 or possibly a future doctor like grandpa, is a black belt in karate.
George, 13, switched from karate to basketball after moving back to Canada. The first-degree karate brown belt is in his third hoops season with the KW Vipers.
Mom, a yoga enthusiast for decades who karate trained with her kids, is a green belt.
Lily and George are both ambitious. They are mom’s biggest challenge and biggest inspiration.
“Best friends, half the time,” Lawrie said. “Worst enemies, the other half.”
Yet both are united in their sibling support of mom and the red team in Champions for Charity.
Nose-bop aside, boxing seems to agree with Lawrie.
“I love boxing. It’s been so much fun. It’s amazing how much, watching my teammates, we’ve improved. From learning how to step while you throw something out there. To getting in a ring for two minutes having no qualms about taking a punch.”
Lawrie has already shown she’s willing to do that.
Now, she’s ready to face the blue team’s Beth Borody on Fight Night.
Hands up. Always.
“Regardless of the outcome, this has been a winning experience.”
To support Jill, click here.
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