Three teenage siblings in Fremont have achieved a lot in their young lives. Monique Magallanes, 17, her sister Jasmine, 15, and their brother Anthony, 14, have beaten the top martial artists of their age in Kung Fu, Karate, and other fighting styles. They hold numerous national and world titles and will likely be seen in Hollywood movies in the near future. Being famous, though, was not their original goal.

“I was being bullied at school and my parents decided it was time we learned martial arts to defend ourselves,” says Monique. Her father Anthony began training all three kids at home and then enrolled them in the same martial arts school that he had trained at years earlier.

As their skills grew and the bullying at school stopped, the three siblings were careful not to talk about it much or demonstrate to kids at school. As a common principle of martial arts, both the Kung Fu trainers and Mr. Magallanes reinforced to the kids that they are to use their skills for self defense and not to become bullies themselves.

“We’re trained to use it only if we really need to,” says Monique. “We don’t use our techniques right away – we try to get out of the situation by talking and trying to calm the person down – if we had to we would use it to defend ourselves, but we’re not trying to fight.”

They started competing in martial arts events and they loved the feeling when they won their first competition. They soon became top competitors.

Jasmine watched as her older sister was regularly winning competitions. “I was proud of her but I didn’t want to get left behind,” she says. So I started training harder and began winning. “I felt great when I was doing it – I loved that feeling,” she adds.

Anthony says he was also motivated to build championship skills by wanting to perform at the same level as his older siblings. “I wanted to beat them and they wanted to beat me,” he says. Competition among them spurred greater motivation to achieve more and help each other. In 2008 they competed in their first world competition and won five world titles in the 2008 National Black Belt League World Games. 

On winning championships, Anthony says, “It feels great to achieve something that you worked hard for.”

“It taught us one of the life lessons that hard work pays off,” says Monique. “And in order to keep winning we had to put in a lot of hard work and that it would pay off in the end.”

“It was a lot of work, we’ve been training for more than eight years,” says Jasmine. “It’s taken a lot of time.”

After winning several championships in contact competition, the three siblings now participate in non-contact performances where skills are judged on an individual basis. Each one of them say they are interested in doing movie work as actors – they’ve already appeared in TV ads and in magazines.

“Right now we have a lot of opportunities,” says Anthony. They are looking forward to performing in Europe and in a world competition in New York later this year. They say that being champions have brought them many opportunities and that they’re very excited for their future.

Speaking of his ultimate goal in training his children, Mr. Magalles says it was foremost to see them become great people and have a positive influence in their community. Even though his children are champions and have received much attention, Mr. Magalles says that they are very respectful and very humble. “They don’t talk a lot about the things they can do,” he says. That same humility is also needed to walk away from confrontational situations. “That’s what I focused on - their maturity and knowing right from wrong,” he adds. “The martial arts have given them the confidence that they don’t have to fight.”

Their maturity and confidence also allows them to help each other become better says Mr. Magalles, who speaks about the children’s knowledge that their individual success is tied to each other. Such winning attitudes will certainly serve the siblings well in their future, whether or not they become movie stars.