By Matt Hoicsh
Jimmy Moody (left) has been coaching Nicole Ross (right) and helping her recover from a torn ACL. Pictures courtesy of Jimmy Moody and Nicole Ross.
For the last year and half, Jimmy Moody has been leading a double life. Part of the time, he’s a Deputy with the Telluride Marshal's Department. But the other part, he’s a world class fencing coach. And the two roles aren’t as different as you would think.
“The majority of coaching is learning how to say the same thing a thousand different ways.” Moody says. “And then, also just being infinitely patient. Those are both skills that have translated to the Marshal’s Department and law enforcement that have made me extremely successful in this town. And learning to listen to understand rather than listen to argue.”
And Moody is good at what he does. In a few weeks, he’s heading to Tokyo as a fencing coach on team USA for the summer Olympics. It’s a pretty remarkable streak, especially for someone who really more or less stumbled into the game.
Growing up in Colorado, Moody got into fencing at 14 after his parents told him he needed to find an afterschool sport.
“And so this short, chubby Asian kid started following his friends to every different sport,” Moody explains. “And fencing is like, the coach just hooked me up and put a sword in my hand and was like ‘Survive!’. And I was like ‘I want to live!.’ It got me going. It got me motivated. I have a strong survival instinct it turns out.”
Strong enough to become the captain of the Penn State fencing team, win two NCAA championships, get onto team USA, and help train for the London Olympics.
Picture courtesy of Jimmy Moody.
In 2016, Moody retired from the sport. After some time, he decided to give back to his home state by going into law enforcement.
“Sort of that team dynamic,” he says of law enforcement. “I’m not stuck behind a desk. I get to be out and about, interacting, chatting. It just sort of clicked and it fit as a great way for me to repay that debt.”
Moody joined the Telluride Marshal’s Department in early 2020. But, fencing found a way back into his life. Around the same time, Nicole Ross, an old fencing friend, asked him to jump back in to coach her. Ross had competed in the London Olympics and was eyeing the Tokyo Olympics. Moody was game.
“I have no desire to coach anyone but Nicole. She’s the only person I would work with in the United States or in the world.”
But it wasn’t just any coaching. Ross needed Moody to help her recover from a massive setback. In December 2019, she tore her ACL. According to Moody, that would be a career ending injury for most people. It took away her ability to change directions, Moody explains.
“I was really lost,” Ross says. “Really depressed and scared. Like I didn’t know if my career was over.”
What came next was the definition of determination and audacity. Ross worked with Moody and others to reimagine how she could fence without an ACL—without changing directions.
“You are going to be this tank and you are just going to move forward and then either they stop and you hit them or you just plow through them,” Moody says. “You don’t have a choice.”
Ironically, Ross feels the constraints also gave her an advantage because, she explains, fencing is such an open game.
“It’s hard when you have a lot of options,” she says. “It can be confusing and it can get complicated. But when you have very few options, it quiets your brain a little bit, and you can focus on those few options and be very deliberate.”
Picture courtesy of Nicole Ross.
It worked. Ross was seeing great results with the new approach. But then, COVID hit, and she had time to get surgery. This year she qualified for the postponed Tokyo Olympics.
Moody was at his desk in the Marshal’s Office when he found out.
“I was just grabbing my monitor, shaking it and screaming at it,” he remembers. “Everyone was like ‘Are you okay?’ I was like ‘I’m fine!’”
Of course, the work isn’t done yet. But it’s changed. At this point, Moody says most of his job is psychological. Recovery, after all, is more than just physical.
“Unless you’ve had a traumatic injury like that, you don’t understand the PTSD that comes with it afterwards. You have to understand, Nicole had this injury, she tore off her ACL, when she was in peak form. She was in a competition, she was in some the best shape of her life, and she was fencing at some of the highest level of her life. And then it just randomly happened. I feel like that plants this seed in your mind—whether you’re aware of it or not, subconsciously—where you’re like ‘Wow, anything can happen at any time.’ And she’s coming back, she’s feeling strong, she’s feeling good, but she was also feeling strong and good when the injury happened.”
Still, with less than a month until the games, both Moody and Ross are in good spirits.
“I definitely feel more prepared than I ever have for these Olympics,” Ross says.
“The person who Nicole is now, as a person, as a fencer, as an athlete,” Moody adds, “is exactly who she needs to be to win a medal”
COVID precautions mean it’s going to be an Olympics like no other. But at least Telluridians can watch the games and know a local voice is there cheering and coaching for Team USA.