A young kickboxer’s hopes of retaining his World Championship gold medal are in jeopardy, despite a hugely successful year.
Zack Donnelly is an 11-year-old from Kirkby who, earlier this November, won three medals at the World Kickboxing Championships in Albufeira Portugal, the highlight being a gold medal in the –40kg Light Continuous competition.
His other two medals were a gold and silver in the Team Boys Points and Continuous competitions respectively, for which he was selected by the England team after his early impressive individual performances.
However, despite being the reigning World Champion, his family have shed light on what it takes for youth athletes to compete at the highest level.
And it is apparent that retaining his title in next year’s competition in Niagara, Canada might just be out of reach.
Paul Donnelly, Zack’s father, said: “Financially, we’re saying to Zack that we’ve already got a summer holiday booked, and getting to Niagara is going to be difficult. We would have to sacrifice the summer holiday and it’s going to be a lot of money.
“It’s a big sacrifice and I don’t know if we will be able to go.”
With kickboxing not being in the Olympics, it means there isn’t necessarily the funding to pay to send athletes out for events.
Paul said: “We pay for it all ourselves. I know a lot of clubs and individuals do seek sponsorship but that’s not something we did this year. I did get help off family, and there was a local councillor in Kirkby (Steve Smith from Whitfield Ward, Kirkby) who gave us funding towards Zack’s kit (£300).
“We didn’t do anything like a GoFundMe because it didn’t sit right with us. I work full-time and my wife (Melanie Donnelly) does, and I just feel like I’m asking people to send me and my son on holiday, and I just didn’t want that.”
Training out of Hurricane Combat & Fitness in Fazakerley, the demands to climb to the top for children of Zack’s age requires an enormous amount of commitment and dedication.
Across a 12-week training block in the run-up to the event, Paul revealed the price of their success.
He said: “Some mornings we were up at 10 to five, and there were the sessions in the morning at the club, and then some evenings we were dropping him off at half five or six o’clock and then picking him back up at nine o’clock.
“I look back now on some of the sessions in some of the weeks, and there would be 25, 26 different sessions that he was attending over the seven days.”
Paul described how by weeks nine or 10 of the programme, he and his wife felt as though they had ‘hit a wall’ and remembers thinking how they ‘couldn’t wait for it to be over’.
Paul added: “How we got through it now looking back even, the toll it took on me and my wife, and the whole family really. Whilst we’re out and about running him here, there and everywhere, his twin sister was missing out, seeing mum or dad for that time.
“But we got through it. Before we went (to the World Championships), we said ‘never again’.”
Once at the competition though, it was Zack’s chance to shine and make the sacrifices worth it.
Despite an early disappointment, being unfortunate to lose his first fight in the Points competition, the rising star composed himself to help team England win a gold and silver in the team events, before capping off the week in style, winning the WKC Individual Boys –40kg category.
Paul and Zack travelled out to the Algarve together, and he had seen his son’s dedication throughout.
He said: “In that 12 weeks, when we were shaking him at 4:50 to get him out of bed, he never once moaned or said ‘I don’t want to go’. I mean I would’ve found that difficult even when I was 20, never mind at 11 years of age.”
While travelling out to North America may be off the cards, the 2025 national championships are certainly not. In fact, its ‘already on the calendar’.
Paul added: “With the determination and the resilience he’s shown now, I just say to him, ‘mate, you can do anything you want when you put your mind to it’.
“It’s not just about going to Portugal and winning those medals- people might see that as the end result, but the work he put in was unbelievable.”
