Eight and Five (Years In Kansas City)

Eight...

Wait, eight?

2026 - 2018 = 8.

Eight years ago, Mr. Chick and I headed to Happy Rock Park on a bright and early Saturday morning for the very first Kansas City Presas Arnis Meetup.

It was, of course, just us. And the Younger Chicklet, playing on the playground at a time where there were no other children around.

We'd had the Meetup live for a few weeks, but these things take time to build, and our Meetup was no different. So on this date, eight years ago, we headed to the park, hoped someone would show up who wanted to train in Arnis/Escrima/Kali/Eskrima.

Nobody showed up that day, but we had a good time training, nonetheless.

If you've tried to start up a training group, you know exactly what this is like. Trying to get ANYBODY to notice that your group exists, plus, the people who love to RSVP for a Meetup and then don't show, which was a constant problem the entire time we had the Meetup.

You get used to disappointment and being ghosted when you run a Meetup, y'all.

After a few weeks, we had one attendee, then two, and then a few more. Most Saturdays, we had two or three people at most.

This picture was taken in September 2018. We were lucky to have a shelter nearby when it rained.

We spent the summer, fall, and winter training on Saturday mornings, and trying to network here in Kansas City to find a place to train indoors, because we were outdoors and WINTER WAS COMING.

Sure enough, that November and December, temps were sometimes in the single-digits, but our diligent few, our Happy Rock Originals, showed up to train, bundled up to our eyeballs.

November 10, 2018. It was probably about 20° when this picture was taken.

Luckily, we soon found an indoor space, switched to Sunday mornings, and then began the slow, slow progress that would eventually lead us to create Kindred Protective Arts. We also had a class out at a karate school in Blue Springs (Elite Dragon Martial Arts) and it was a pleasure to work with them, too. If you want karate and you're on the east side of Kansas City, you can't do any better than there.

We had a lot of fun as a Meetup. Thanks to our friend Eric Siley at Self Defense Global, we were not only able to keep our free Meetup free, but we were able to host a few seminars at his place. We owe him huge debt, and we recommend him and his school if what he teaches is up your alley.

It was a time we are very proud of, and we met some fantastic people.

One of our last Meetups in 2021. Four of the five students pictured here are now Black Belts at KPA.

Eventually, like the crazy people we obviously are, during the pandemic, we thought to ourselves, "Hey, y'know what's a great idea of something to do when people are afraid to congregate in groups? Open a stand-alone martial arts school for a martial art system that is relatively obscure in a tiny spot with bad signage and difficulty with being found!"

As a (maybe, probably) dumb an idea as that was timing-wise, we took the plunge in at the end of August 2021; signed the lease, got our doors open within a week in that September.

Kindred Protective Arts, the successor to the Kansas City Presas Arnis Meetup, just reached its five year anniversary.

In fact, we're growing steadily, and we have staked our place as Kansas City's only full-time FMA school, teaching NOTHING but Arnis, almost every day, to kids and adults.

We do not teach Presas Arnis as a class offered as an add-on to someone's TKD or Karate or Kempo school (that you MUST train in to get to the "stick stuff").

Not that there's anything wrong with that. That's the most common way people in the US are able to train at all. But we didn't want to try to teach anything other than Presas Arnis.

The question was, could we actually start a traditional, stand-alone martial arts school, teaching Presas Arnis as our main offering, and survive? Could we do it, not being seniors in our martial arts community, not being direct students of the founder of Modern Arnis, and not being in an area of the country generally well-known for what we do?

Turns out... we could!

Here we are, five years later, teaching almost every day of the week, hosting seminars, attending seminars and camps (you know that hasn't changed one little bit over the years) and doing our part in keeping FMA's and Modern Arnis / Presas Arnis alive in Kansas City.

Things have changed a lot in eight years.

Y'all remember when I wrote on this blog, like, regularly, several times a week? Ha, ha yeah, good times.

The Stick Chick Blog, 2026.

The time and energy to write the way I used to just isn't there (and to be fair, I've said mostly what I needed or wanted to say, and now, my posting here is irregular at best because I don't feel like I need to spout off as much as I used to).

At KPA, growth is slow, but incremental. We've tried things that worked, and things that didn't, but ultimately, we've been able to build a nice community.

Not bad, for starting in KC eight years ago with two relatively obscure people braving a hot June day at Happy Rock Park in the Kansas City suburbs, mere weeks after moving here from hundreds of miles away.

THANK YOU to the Happy Rock Originals. THANK YOU to the Meetup crew, all of you who stuck with us when we spun up KPA, going from a free Meetup to a paid traditional martial arts school with uniforms and belts and stuff. And THANK YOU to our students, past and present, both in Texas at Hidden Sword and Mid-Cities Arnis and training with us today at KPA.

Thank you to our seniors in the Modern Arnis and Kombatan communities, who trained with us and encouraged us to keep going. Especially Hock Hochheim and Brian Zawilinski, who reached out to help us when we first got the place off the ground. Brian Z. hadn't even MET us, and yet he wanted to help.

I will never forget that. That represents the best of us, what we should be doing to lift each other up.

Thank you to the seniors who have come here and trained us and our students, often crashing at my house, and have mentored us. Thanks to peers who have acted as sounding boards, training partners, and friends.

As of this writing, we've hosted or co-hosted Hock, Art Miraflor, Bruce Chiu several times, Dan Anderson, Dieter Knüttel, Tye Botting, Jeff Burger, Brian Zawilinski, Rick Manglinong, our teachers Mark Lynn and David Jones, had several smaller seminars about Emergency First Aid, taught a couple of Knifesgivings and Sinawalifests, organized a training camp, organized a few Heartland Arnis Players Alliance gatherings, even done a couple of demos and fostered a spin-off program run by one of our own students.

That list above are ONLY the things we hosted or directly sponsored or organized. I didn't count all the things we went to and supported that were hosted and organized by other people, which were many.

As I end this, please, if you're reading this, and have considered trying to start a martial arts training group of your own - DO IT. You never know where it'll lead, I have amazing students in my life now I would have never met if Mr. Chick and I hadn't committed to hanging out and banging sticks at Happy Rock Park for a couple of hours once a week back in 2018.

If you need help, peruse the blog, I've written about it a lot. Or even message me directly, I'm happy to help, just as others helped us along the way.

And if I have more stuff to say that's relevant to all y'all, I'll post again here.

Keep training, everyone!