OSKALOOSA, Iowa — Most days, the Oskaloosa girls track and field team breaks a sweat running laps on the track, but during one practice this Spring, they walked up to a different type of training: self defense.

“Just as a female, knowing how to be safe, knowing how to defend yourself if something like that would ever happen is something that I feel is just a lifelong skill for these girls,” Oskaloosa Girls Track and Field Head Coach Betsy Luck said.

“We were all kind of nervous, but we were really excited to be there because it was something like none of us had ever done before,” Oskaloosa junior Tierney Carter said.

Luck brought in local retired Navy Seal Clay Grandia to teach the girls moves to help protect themselves.

“We learned how to flip someone over our back and throw them,” Oskaloosa sophomore Allison Campbell said. “We learned how to throw punches.”

“If you think about it, you’re going to save a little bit of time if you’re in that situation and do something to make it stop,” Luck added.

“All of the moves that we learned, I don’t think any of us had ever thought about like doing that before,” Carter said. “All of them were like, oh, we’re actually able to do this because they weren’t as hard or complex or needed a lot of muscle strength as you thought.”

Many of these runners train outside of team practice, often alone, which means this self defense training is even more important, especially for the long distance runners.

“Not just the fighting aspect of it, but just being aware of your surroundings. I think that opened up a lot of our eyes that anything could happen to us at any point, at any time,” Carter said. “So if we’re out on a run, this does help us. In case anything were to happen, even though we’re in a safe town, we know what we could potentially do if we had to.”

“In a town like Oskaloosa, we’re pretty safe. But you can never be too careful. But especially being young women, self defense is really important,” Campbell added.