Martial-arts moms kicking for a cancer cure

It all began with a challenge to herself, as Joanne Hutchins tells the story. Back in 2008, the Bayville resident decided to embark on Tiger Schulmann's 90-Day Fitness Challenge, in which participants work out 52 hours, eat nutritiously and track their weight for three months. When she finished she asked her newfound photographer friend Art Koch to take her "after" shots for the competition. And when she showed her workout pals at the Tiger Schulmann gym in Plainview the shots of herself clad in an American flag-print bikini, her friend Sylvie Gaeckler suggested she do a calendar for the troops.

"I said, 'Who am I?' " Hutchins, 45, recalls, though she noted, "I was wearing a flag." The idea of a calendar stuck with her, but the cause closest to her heart was breast cancer, since her mom had been diagnosed with stage-zero breast cancer during Mother's Day weekend 2008.

"I got to thinking: A calendar is a great idea, and cancer is a great cause," Hutchins says. "I was in the locker room at the dojo, and I said we should do a calendar of all us karate and martial arts moms. I just looked around at the women there, and I said you can be in it, and you can be in it, and you can be in it."

And so although Hutchins didn't win the fitness challenge, the endeavor launched a new charity: Moms Who Kick for Breast Cancer.

The organization, founded by Hutchins and Gaeckler, produced its first calendar for 2009. Ten black-and-white photos of 10 moms, all of them over 40 and "very fit," fill the pages, which ran from February 2009 to January 2010. The women pose behind boxing gloves, barbells and nunchakus (martial arts sticks), one woman per month except December and January, which feature a group shot and individual head shots.

Honoring survivors

Many of the women include personal tributes on their calendar months, honoring mothers, sisters and friends who have survived breast cancer. The monthly calendars include important notations on the appropriate date - June 7: Cancer Survivors Day; Oct. 18: LI's Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk, and so on.

Hutchins, a certified personal trainer who runs her own company, Tigress Personal Fitness, was "Miss July." Gaeckler, 47, of Oyster Bay, who runs her own interior design company, was "Miss November."

Why should the models be 40 and fit? The number 40 is important because it's the age women should have their baseline mammogram, Hutchins explains. And the image the women project in the calendars is one of fitness and empowerment, she says.

"For 2009 we started working on it in July. We had a few months to come up with the models. Within six weeks we put together this calendar," Hutchins says. "We raised quite a lot of money - $13,000 for 2009."

Much of the money has come from such corporate sponsors as UBS, which underwrote the 2009 calendar, and smaller sponsors that are part of the moms' own communities - dental offices, CPAs, interior designers are among the sponsors for various months. That kind of sponsorship allows all the proceeds from sales of the $25 calendars to benefit the American Cancer Society.

The 2010 calendar features 17 models, some from the first year along with many new mom models. The calendar has expanded to include moms who are a little younger (two are 37) and to encompass more varied sports - tennis, skiing, even ice skating are represented.

Among the mom models are those who have lost a loved one to cancer.

Dawn Zacharakis, 44, of Dix Hills, lost her mom to cancer when she was 15. She appeared in the 2009 calendar (March) and the 2010 calendar (October). Zacharakis, a hair colorist with three children, has a brown belt in karate and is an avid tennis player. When she lost her mom as a teen, she says, she became "independent very quickly."

She says doing the calendar was an adventure. "It's cool because it's very out of my comfort zone. Normally I'm behind the scenes - like in my profession. But the calendar, it's a little-girl fantasy come true."

"These women aren't models: They're scared going into it, but then they do it and they say let's do it again," Hutchins says.

The calendars also include cancer survivors like Laney Liner, 38, who had a double mastectomy in 2007 after her breast cancer diagnosis. The Plainview mom, who owns Blue Thunder Creative Group, a graphic design and marketing company, met Hutchins through a mutual friend and became involved in the fundraising project.

After her cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgeries, Liner says, "my doctors were very specific in saying, 'Laney, you have to develop a very good exercise routine.' These women [in the calendar] embody the healthy lifestyle, with exercise and nutrition to stay healthy - or remain healthy, in my case. There's always that question of whether it [the cancer] is going to come back. I'm very proactive, and I exercise.

"I help out Moms Who Kick because it will be myself along with others who benefit," Liner adds.

Fundraising events

Moms Who Kick for Breast Cancer also has blossomed to include other events: fundraisers at restaurants and this year, for the first time, a dinner and fashion show at Four Food Studio in Melville.

The Feb. 11 dinner and fashion show began with a cocktail hour and hors d'oeuvres that included tuna tartare and chicken satay skewers. While guests, who paid $60 each, dined on salmon, skirt steak, vegetable pasta or roast chicken, 19 of the calendar moms strutted the runway in fashions from Lonny's, a Long Island clothing store with locations in Hewlett, Huntington, Great Neck, Merrick and Woodbury.

The moms have cultivated support from many other Long Island businesses along the way. Ron Rizzo, an East Hills jewelry designer, not only provided baubles for the fashion show, but also designed a Moms Who Kick Healing Star. The silver eight-point pendant has a pink topaz in the center and is hung on a black silk cord. It sells for $99, and all the profits go to the American Cancer Society. Rizzo says more than 100 have been sold at his shop and benefit events for the group.

Raffles for the event were donated by the likes of Elizabeth Arden Red Door Spa, Sadick Dermatology in Great Neck and Vino Fiamma in Oyster Bay.

Winning one of those raffles, a gift basket of wine, was Vanessa Wenzel, 41, of Fort Salonga. After dinner she sat with her friend as they munched on one of the desserts - a pink swirl of "adult cotton candy."

"I'm here to support my friend Antoinette," Wenzel says. "She really opened me up to this."

Wenzel's friend was one of the newest Moms Who Kick calendar moms: Antoinette Ardizzone. The 45-year-old from Fort Salonga was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, and she'll be featured in the 2011 calendar. She had a double mastectomy after her diagnosis; nevertheless, she says she's "doing great."

"One doctor said that the best thing I could do for myself is to keep exercising - and I'm at the gym at 5:30 in the morning because of that," Ardizzone says. Among her passions: spin classes, body-sculpting classes and kickboxing, though she hasn't decided how she'll "kick" for the calendar.

$25,000 so far

Altogether the fashion show event raised about $5,000, bringing the Moms Who Kick for Breast Cancer's 2010 fundraising efforts to about $25,000, Hutchins says.

Sitting at another table, finishing dessert as the event was winding down, was Yvonne Doyle of Forest Hills, Joanne Hutchins' mother, who declined to give her age other than to say she's in her 70s. She says she was surprised that she was the impetus for Moms Who Kick for Breast Cancer.

"I didn't realize it hit her so hard," Doyle says. "She gives the impression with the marital arts that she's so tough, but she's really sensitive."

Tough is exactly the image Hutchins wants to exude. "The term I love is 'kick for the cure.' We really want to kick breast cancer's butt," she says.

For more on the Moms Who Kick for Breast Cancer calendar, including sponsorship opportunities, visit momswhokick.com.