Champion for Charity Shannon Gerryts shares the secret to training horses, purple gorillas and herself
By Jeff Hicks
GUELPH —
Shannon Gerryts, 46, has been horse-smitten since she was six years old.
That’s when her dad Gary bought her a tiny bay pony, a Welsh cob mare named Blacks Victoria. “Vicki” could be a maned menace to a wannabe rider like little Shannon.
“She bucked me off every time I got on her,” recalled Gerryts, one of Mandy Bujold’s 20 Champions for Charity to make their boxing debut in The Brawl at Tapestry Hall on April 4.
For years, Vicki gave young Shannon a rough ride and a dusty seat in the dirt.
“Vicki taught me resilience,” said Gerryts, who went from pushing brooms and capping rebar on construction sites as a teen to become Senior Project Manager for VanDel Construction.
“She taught me hard work. If you want something, you’ve got to keep trying.”
So Gerryts, a decade before beginning a career in construction, started building a relationship with Vicki. She couldn’t force a 1,200-pound animal to do her no-buck bidding.
Force wouldn’t work. Instead, she listened and watched Vicki’s body language. Trust was key.
“I had to get her to see that it was her idea that maybe she should not buck me off,” said Gerryts, now a mother of two hockey-playing kids in Guelph when she’s not overseeing a cool affordable housing project in Kitchener.
“Eventually, we got on the same page and we won some pretty good ribbons.”
On Fight Night, Gerryts aims to buck and batter her opponent to win her bout for the Blue Team’s assemblage of community leaders and business heavyweights.
The notorious Horse Whisperer and one-time professional equestrian coach is training herself now as she trains with her teammates at Sydfit Health Centre with an eye to raising funds for McMaster Children’s Hospital.
So far, the Champions have collected over $420,000 for MacKids.
As an expectant mom half way through her first pregnancy, Gerryts spent some anxious moments at McMaster as concerning test results were explored. But all turned out well.
Now, 11 years later, her daughter Briar is a feisty firecracker patrolling the wings for her rep hockey team. Her son Easton, 9, is the bruising enforcer for his rep hockey team.
Both play rep soccer too, which their mom coaches.
“Everything I do is for my family,” Gerryts said.
“I’m fighting for my kids on April 4th. I just picture my kids, if God forbid, my kids ever had to go to McMaster again. That’s what I bring into the ring.”
Tapestry Hall will be sold out that night. Briar and Easton don’t want mom to disappoint.
They constantly push her. They ask her how training is going. Easton peppers her mid-section with flurries of ab-pounding jabs. Her husband Chris, a supervisor for Metro Concrete, believes she can pour herself into just about anything.
“My husband is the most supportive man,” she said. “I could probably tell him I want to go raise purple gorillas on a mountain in Sweden. And he’d just tell me I’d do great.”
Gerryts still has one horse. “Tuffy” is a retired old hay burner who loves champing at the bit of Scotch mints the kids often bring him.
His training days are over. Gerryts’ Champions for Charity training is well underway.
She is disciplined and determined. She will not get bucked from this challenge she embraces every day.
“That’s the biggest thing — be consistent,” Gerryts said.
“That’s how I trained horses. That’s how I train myself.”
With Easton within earshot, she repeated words of horse sense he has heard often.
“Hard work beats talent every single time.”
To support Shannon, click here.
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