Meggie Ochoa:
Fighting for country, fighting for abuse survivors

When Meggie Ochoa (BS MGT ’12) was a student-athlete in Ateneo, it was not in jiu-jitsu, the martial art where she won her 2023 Asian Games gold medal. In fact, she only started practicing the art after she graduated from college.

However, this does not mean her time at Ateneo did not help shape her both as an athlete and a person for others – the latter expressed through her advocacy “Fight to Protect,” teaching jiu-jitsu to victims of sexual abuse.

Before she was winning gold medals in jiu-jitsu, and well before she was teaching it to sexual abuse victims, Meggie was a member of the Ateneo Women's Track and Field Team (AWTFT). Back then, she wasn’t even thinking about jiu-jitsu, let alone winning medals for the country in it. 

“When I was a track athlete, I wasn’t really good,” she admits, adding that representing the country as an athlete was “a farfetched dream” back then.

“I never really thought that I would ever become part of the national team,” she adds, referencing her later success in jiu-jitsu.

It was only after Meggie graduated from Ateneo, that she developed an interest in Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), following a suggestion from one of her track and field teammates. Here, she gravitated towards competitive jiu-jitsu as it was a better fit for her smaller stature, especially since local MMA did not have competitions in her weight class at the time.

 “I wanted to fight (in MMA), but I couldn’t find fights because I had no weight class,” she explains. “I was only 90 plus pounds after college.” 

“I switched to jiu-jitsu because even if you’re smaller, it’s safer because there’s no striking.”

From track to jiu-jitsu

While track and field and jiu-jitsu seem to be worlds apart, her experiences as an AWTFT member during her time in Ateneo still helped when she started training in the latter. It was in these formative years that she learned a lot about hard work and not giving up, even while having to balance training with other things.

“My experience as a track and field varsity athlete taught me a lot about commitment,” she explains. “Committing to a sport while not neglecting my studies.” 

“That taught me a lot about time management, as well.”

Back when she was in Ateneo, she would train before going to class, and then train again after class. Then after all that, she would still have to do any coursework that her professors required for the classes she was taking.

“Kasi sa Ateneo, hindi naman pwede na athlete lang, kailangan talaga na student-athlete.”

This same discipline is what she took to jiu-jitsu. After nearly a decade of practice, Meggie eventually earned her black belt in 2022. Along the way, she’s seen success in multiple competitions. These include three World IBJJF Jiu-Jitsu Championships in her weight class in 2014, 2015, and 2016; a gold medal at the 2018 Ju-Jitsu World Championships in Sweden, making her the first Filipino fighter to do so; a gold medal in the recent 2023 Asian Ju-Jitsu Championships in Bangkok, Thailand; and multiple medals in both the Southeast Asian Games and Asian Games – including her recent gold in the Hangzhou, China.

‘Fight to Protect’

But discipline in sports isn’t the only thing that her time in Ateneo has taught Meggie. She’s also carried with her the Jesuit value of being a person for others which can be seen in her advocacy, “Fight to Protect.”

Founded in 2018, “Fight to Protect” sees Meggie and her team using Jiu-Jitsu to help victims of child sexual abuse deal with their trauma.

​​​​​​

“In jiu-jitsu, you’re put in very uncomfortable positions, because it’s a close-contact sport,” she explains. Through this, her students in Fight to Protect learn not just to deal with that discomfort and anxiety, but also how to fight and find a way out of these situations.

“Sometimes, if you let the discomfort overwhelm you, then that’s it, you’re just going to tap out,” she says. “But if you gain the presence of mind, even with the discomfort, if you’re able to think and know that ‘I’m okay, I just need to do this and that.’”

By competing in jiu-jitsu, Meggie’s charges are given a controlled environment to be able to learn how to deal with these situations. The idea is that by learning to deal with these in that controlled environment, they’ll eventually be able to do so in real life as well. She relates one example where she was able to help one of her students apply what they learned when they had to go to a court hearing.

“We applied the same kinds of routines that we applied in competition, because they were going to be facing a difficult situation facing [their abuser] in court.”

Doing more

Meggie attributes her faith and desire to do more to help as part of the reason she started Fight to Protect – something informed by her time in Ateneo. In particular, the call to be men and women for others as well as the Ignatian practice of discernment.

“Of course, I’ve learned a lot in Ateneo. I went through a lot of questions, especially in terms of philosophy, the meaning of things and all that,” she says. 

Indeed, the more she started winning, the more she started wondering about what more she could do with all she achieved.

“It was after I won a world title in 2015 as a blue belt that I started asking that question of purpose,” she expounds. “I read this article on CNN about child sex trafficking [titled] ‘Survivor in Mexico,’ and I was really bothered by that article.” Meggie says the subject of the article even kept her up at night.

From this, she eventually met with like-minded individuals who helped her found Fight to Protect while also going back to God in the process.

“That whole question of purpose, it was actually the Lord seeking me,” she says, adding that the process led her “to know Him” and “to bring glory to His name.”

Through Fight to Protect, she believes she’s able to help share God’s love with children who’ve suffered from sexual abuse.

Fighting on and off the mat

And it’s through sharing this love that she hopes she’ll be able to motivate her students to not just grow past their trauma but to also achieve as much as she has.

Her hope is that some of her Fight to Protect students eventually go on to compete and win at competitions like the Asian Games.

“Since I was able to walk that path, I can guide them on the same path, if that’s the path that they want to go to.”

Indeed, she’s quite hopeful for her current batch of Fight to Protect students, some of whom have already started joining jiu-jitsu competitions.

In the meantime, she continues to fight, not just on the mat, but also in the real world, building awareness not just of the sport jiu-jitsu or the plight of victims child sexual abuse, but also of how the former can be used to aid the latter.