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Miami Palmetto High School junior Mikayla Ashe is empowering women to defend themselves. Ashe has a program called Fight Like a Girl 305.The goal is to spread awareness about self-defense to as many young girls and women as she can.
“I’ve been doing martial arts since I was five ,” she says. “I have a lot of expertise.”
Ashe has a third-degree black belt and has been teaching others martial arts since she was nine.
“At nine years I became a blue belt, another milestone. You’re able to teach juniors from ages three to 45.”
She’s been attending Believe Martial Arts since she started taking Tae Kwon Do.
The statistics from Miami-Dade Police bear out the worry Ashe has about women becoming sex trafficking victims. Those stats say Miami-Dade has the highest concentration of sex trafficking in the state.
The self-defense classes run 90 minutes. They are geared for movements that will help with self-defense.
“Self-defense is a tricky concept and practice to learn. Google is a click away and anyone has the freedom to look up self-defense tactics,” she says. “But the most progress is made through constructive criticism and application, which is what Fight Like A Girl aims to do.”
She began teaching self-defense when she was 12 and helping a friend with some classes.
“She graduated and I took the reins of the whole program,” Ashe says. “I wanted to produce the best and be the most beneficial.”
She’s also branched out.
“Due to the recent Asian hate crimes, we wanted to host a class,” she says. “I’m an Asian American woman. It was important to acknowledge. We shifted the program to more specific techniques that would combat hate crimes.”
Before the pandemic, 30-35 would attend the classes. Now, because of COVID, there are more classes with fewer attendees.
On Instagram, she uses the name FightLikeAGirl305 and posts self-defense skills not covered in class.
“We reach girls in other states in America. I post tutorials online,” she says.
At Palmetto, she’s a member of Women of Tomorrow, the Women’s Union, and a Science Bowl team. She ran for co-president of the Asian Culture Club and is a member of the National Honor Society and the Student Cabinet.
She’s working on hosting a Women’s Day Conference. One of the events at the conference will be a self-defense class.
She’s also the co-president and co-founder of the Chinese Honor Society. She was instrumental in completing the paperwork to create the club.
“We teach our members different phrases and words in Chinese,” she says. “We have themes. We go over the different dialects. We try to bring clarity to Chinese culture.”
For her language credits, she took Chinese at Palmetto. That and her time at Chinese School when she was younger enabled her to work as a teaching assistant for the Pinecrest Elementary Mandarin class.
For fun and exercise, she does CrossFit training. She likes the CrossFit youth empowerment system.
She says the combination of Tae Kwon Do and CrossFit has been a big influence on who she is.
In a couple of years, Ashe hopes to be in college majoring in film. Her career choice has been influenced by her brother, who is a professional colorist in LA.
“I’ve come to terms with filmmaking on my own. Just like many other kids, I wanted to make it big on YouTube,” she says. “I never became a YouTube sensation, but I did gain the ability to edit. It’s become a pivotal role in my life and has been a very sustainable way for me to be happy.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
