You might say Kevin McDaniel has a personal reason to continue teaching Tae Kwon Do, but that’s not the only reason he does it.
McDaniel, a self-described “computer nerd” from 9 to 5 at American Family Insurance, also runs the American Martial Arts Center at the Keva Sports Center during the prime time hours. He’s not ready to quit his day or his evening job just yet, and that’s because both help the former martial arts fighter support a special young lady — his youngest daughter Brittany, who has a mild form of Cerebral Palsy, is cognitively disabled, and serves as both employee and student at American Martial Arts Center.
“Brittany joins me two or three nights a week at Keva,” McDaniel noted. “She helps me out. She’s definitely my buddy.”
She’s also a major source of inspiration and frequent driver miles during his “coast-to-coast” work day. McDaniel’s work day begins by taking Brittany from their home in Waunakee to a bus stop in the Raymond Road area, where she then heads to Memorial High School as he makes the mad dash to the American Center. After work, the pattern is reversed, only he picks Brittany up and they head to the Keva Sports Center in Middleton.
“I sure see a lot of the Madison area,” McDaniel said.
He also sees a lot of potential being fulfilled. McDaniel, who in his youth had been ranked in the top five among heavyweight martial arts fighters from 1981-86, didn’t necessarily launch American Martial Arts Center to serve special needs children, but since he wanted to help his daughter, it’s become part of a program that specializes in age-specific training with a focus on physical and mental development.
“I don’t know that I’d say it’s ever been our focus to help developmentally disabled people,” explained McDaniel, who until recently was active in United Cerebral Palsy of Greater Dane County. “My daughter is cognitively disabled, so it’s always been worked into the plan to include opportunities for kids that are developmentally disabled or cognitively disabled. We have a lot of ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) kids and high-functioning autistics, but I hesitate to say it was a targeted focus.”
“With Brittany, I think it helps her social interactions with other kids. Cognitively, Brittany is about six years old. Socially, she is all of a teenager, so she really understands what is expected of her in peer groups. She is really concerned about how others view her, and martial arts have given her the self-confidence to deal with that.”
IT Guy
For McDaniel, operating martial arts schools has been only part of his work ethic. His professional life has taken him to places like New Glarus Foods, where he worked as a plant manager, and to another meat plant he helped design. The facility employed about 200 people and cranked out roughly about three-quarters of a million tons of meat per day — pizza toppings for Pizza Hut and taco meat for Taco Bell.
His IT background started in the meat industry. As his employers were designing the plant, they were moving toward more automation, and McDaniel had to gain a better understanding of that. In the early 1990s, the United States Department of Agriculture created a program that required companies to identify critical areas where food might be microbially compromised, which involved testing.
“A lot of companies were employing a ton of quality assurance people that would sit at these machines and do this study,” he explained. “We designed a system that allowed all of that information to be put into a database and get a look at trends. We didn’t need to employ those QA people. Most of our equipment was in position to dump information over a network.”
That IT background is helping him better manage American Martial Arts Center. He may not have had time to invent the wheel himself, but he was able to perform a high level of due diligence on an outside vendor. That vendor integrated the website, Facebook fan pages, and front desk system so that anyone who visits the site and clicks on “more information” is entered into the customer data base. McDaniel is notified of this via e-mail, and if they choose to fill out a survey, he can get an idea of their goals, why they are interested, and whether they are likely committed or marginally committed.
“It’s sort of like a pre-qualified sales lead,” he explained, “so that we can figure out where we need to spend our time.”
McDaniel may be large in stature, but his personable nature puts children at ease, especially if they want to excel at Tae Kwon Do. He became a martial artist after studying under some of the pioneers of Tae Kwon Do, including founder General Choi Hong Hi. After becoming one of the top ranked heavyweight fighters nationally, he participated in the 1987 Pan American Games and was ranked as an international fighter from 1986 to 1988.
He has operated martial arts schools since 1985, but through career changes he has opened schools in various cities. Upon his return to Madison in 2000, he opened the latest incarnation and moved to the Keva Sport Center in 2007.
The Middleton-based martial arts center began with just seven students; 10 years later, it has over 100 students with plans to expand on Madison’s east side in 2011 in a facility that would offer martial arts instruction, fitness programs, and self-defense seminars.
“We could probably double or triple our growth if we made a concerted effort, but we prefer to grow it organically, focus on providing quality, and build a business around that model,” McDaniel explained.
Part of that growth is a new program called cage fitness, a combination of wrestling and martial arts that is more about fitness than fighting. McDaniel said the structured, cardio-intensive program is extremely popular, especially with women. “They get a martial arts feel to their workouts,” he noted, “without having to grapple with some 300-pound fat guy like me.”
McDaniel is not yet at the point where he can step out of his day job and run the center full-time, so he’s still cognizant of managing the Center’s growth, and the goal is to grow at a pace that does not dilute programming. The Keva space is about 6,000 square feet, which is enormous from a martial arts perspective, and the east side location would ideally be about 2,500 square feet.
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