Meet a blind Judo champ whose biggest opponent is the word ‘no’

This story was originally published in October 2022.

Michelle Jorgensen grew up as the only blind child in a small community in northern B.C. She has no sight in her right eye and only 10 per cent vision in her left.

As a kid, she tried taking up hobbies like Tee-ball or even just playing piano. The common word she kept hearing from the instructors was, ‘no’.

“The response that I got growing up in a very small town of like, 3,000 people was, ‘we can’t coach a blind student,’” Jorgensen told Kelowna10. “They didn’t know how to do it, so I got rejected from literally everything I tried to do.”

She had hoped pursuing a hobby might help her socialize and have fun with other kids. Instead, some of her classmates were not sympathetic to her situation at all.

“I literally had boys when I was in school who wanted to beat-up the blind kid,” she said. “[They] found out it wasn’t that easy, but they still tried.”

Following her parents’ divorce, she moved around the country before finally coming to Kelowna and enrolled at UBCO for forensics and medicine.

It was at this time while volunteering for victim services in 2017 that Jorgensen heard of a women’s self defense seminar. Without any prior martial arts experience, she instantly fell in love with it.

Despite having past teachers not even willing to show her how to swim, Sean McHugh, who is now head of Alliance Jiu-jitsu, offered to take her under his wing and nurture her new passion.

“I would have taken a bullet for that man,” Jorgensen said. “I was hugging my first Gi [uniform] because I was just so excited to actually be able to do a sport and not be just shut out simply because I couldn’t see.”

At a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu meet, she met Judo practitioners who invited her to train with them. After a year of that, she was encouraged to compete at the 2020 Pan American Games in Montreal.

Five months later she won gold and signed her professional contract.

Jorgensen still trains with the Kelowna Judo Club and joined Toshido MMA where she said they also welcomed her with open arms.

(Little 2024 update here. Jorgensen recently got engaged and her fiancé trains with Toshido MMA, too, and is her new striking partner!)

She also organizes campaigns to give back to charities like Canadian Blood Services and the Canadian Cancer Society.

To her surprise, kids from as far as the U.S. follow her journey online and are inspired by her example.

“When I was a little kid, I didn’t have that,” Jorgensen said. “If I can be that person for the next generation and have them be like, ‘well, she did it so I can do it too,’ it’d be amazing.”