In the San Francisco gym of World Team USA, the sounds of punching and kicking overwhelm the hip-hop music playing in the background. The smell of sweat fills the room, but to the kickboxers it is the smell of hard work, success and the fulfillment of a dream they have all had since the first day they fought.

Jade Hayes, an International Muay Thai Organization (IMTO) California Champion, is watching one of her teammates mercilessly punching the face of another teammate in the ring. Meanwhile, her coach Kru Sam Phimsoutham (“Kru” means instructor in Thai), standing at the corner of the ring in his black tracksuit, yells, “Come on, ladies.”

Coming from a disciplined military family, Phimsoutham believes in a structured method of teaching. “In life without discipline,” he says, “you can’t get anything accomplished.” Today, Phimsoutham has more than forty fighters who compete in fights every weekend all over the world. Just like the words on the wall, this is the place “Where champions are made and legends return.”

At another side of the ring, several cornermen are calling out moves to the fighters. “You can’t fight alone,” says Hayes, who just turned twenty-one in September and has been training on and off at the gym since she was sixteen. “You need that foundation to be successful. It is family when you are at the gym. In a way, it’s kind of weird that you want to hit someone to make them a better person, because it shows that they have an opening, so you want to get in.”

Hayes has always wanted to do boxing. “Jade’s father used to do Taekwondo,” says Hayes’ mother, Gina. “He is a wrestler. When Jade was younger, she would grapple and move like him. She wrestled with him and she loved it.” Little Jade would say, “I want to do this when I grow up.” And her parents would giggle, not knowing that she would one day be a kickboxing champion.

Seeing her father wrestle was one reason for Hayes’ interest in fighting. Another reason was her mother.

“My mother was a bully, although she is all spiritual now,” says Hayes. “When I was in kindergarten hearing about my mom knocking someone’s teeth out and I thought it was the coolest thing. Actually, she’s told me if anyone hit you, you’d better deck them. I’d come home from high school, and I’d be like, ‘Mom, I got into a fight,’ and her first question was always, ‘Did you win?’ I think that’s why I kind of was tailored towards fighting.”

But with the fighting came problems. She was kicked out of high school and put on probation. Patti Teran, who holds several regional and international kickboxing titles, then introduced Hayes to the gym. “Now people want me to do it,” Hayes says. “It’s definitely an outlet I personally need to find.”

Most of Hayes’ anger came from her dad, who passed away two years ago, before he got to see any of Hayes’ fights. Growing up with a mentally ill father and experiencing domestic violence at home particularly was hard on Hayes. “[I had] no brother, no sister, no cable, no games, no nothing,” says Hayes, who had to find alternative ways to entertain herself until her mother got home. “And when she got home, she didn’t want to talk to me, ‘cause she was too busy working. I was really alone. This gym gives me a sense of belonging. That’s why I cling to it so much.”

Hayes now sees kickboxing as an art. “I am not an angry person at all,” says Hayes, a senior studying recreation at San Francisco State. “It definitely calms me down a lot. I learn more life lessons in general in that gym than [I do] sitting in plastic chairs at this college, paying $1,600 a semester for it.”

Although her mother never wanted Hayes to fight, she has been very supportive. She is there watching every fight. “It’s very hard to watch,” says Gina, who has to worry about her daughter being hit and hitting other people. “I’m glad that she respects it as a sport. She is not trying to rip them open and make them bleed.”

Hayes would never consider leaving the gym, which is like a family to her. “My trainer taught me how to crawl,” says Hayes of her mentor, Phimsoutham. “He made me who I am today, not just in the ring, but outside as well. And I wouldn’t want to take everything he has molded for me, and everything he has taught me, and go to another gym.”

As a teacher, Phimsoutham has gone through some of the most difficult times with Hayes. He was there when her father died. He made a promise to himself that he would try to be a father for her, look after her and help any way he could. “I want to see her well-being,” says Phimsoutham. “She is a champion, but I also want her to be a champion in life, to grow, to be happy no matter what fight she is in. I see so much potential in her. I believe in her. She is very driven. If she wants it, she can make it happen.”

Dropping the pounds has been a challenge to Hayes while fighting in the lightweight division. She is now twenty pounds heavier than her fight weight. “When I fight at a heavier weight, I feel more energetic,” says Hayes. “When I fight at a lower weight, mentally, it puts you in a depressive state. You don’t eat. You don’t drink anything. You don’t enjoy anything you actually need for survival. And you are so focused on the fight that you don’t care for any of that.”

Michael Mananquil, who also trained Hayes when she first got to the gym, says that she had talent and a “crazy work ethic” from the start. Hayes follows a strict training routine. She goes to two-hour Muay Thai classes seven days a week, and runs every day for five miles, except on Sundays, when she runs ten. She swims and lifts every other day to change it up.

Talent alone will get you far, but effort will get you further. Hayes has won all seven of her fights without allowing the judges to decipher the outcome, as she’s knocked out all seven opponents. In Hayes’ second fight, Phimsoutham put her up against someone with thirty fights under her belt. The opponent left the ring with a broken nose from a kick to the face.

To her, the gym is her savior. “If it wasn’t for the gym,” says Hayes, “I probably wouldn’t be in college; I wouldn’t have graduated from high school. If it wasn’t for the gym, I don’t know what I’d be. I would not be what I am today, that’s for sure.”

Despite the fact that her mother wants her to become a teacher, Hayes’ goal is to be a professional kickboxer. “Obviously, when I have kids, it’s going to be hard to be like, ‘Hey, I’m going to train and fight now,’” says Hayes enthusiastically. “I think, though, in the long run, this is something I want to pursue. I don’t want to forget about it.”