CCS bully battle engages 'Sweethearts'
Duo delivers message they've shared with 2 million nationwide
Cooperstown High Alum Tom Murphy, left, and Iraq War vet Rick Yarosh, right, flank CCS Junior / Senior High Assistant Principal Amy Malcuria after a March 7 interactive anti-bullying assembly.
The lights went out in Cooperstown High School’s Sterling Auditorium on the afternoon of March 7, not long after sophomores, juniors, and seniors had filed in for an afternoon assembly. The video screen went live with a high-energy montage of career highlights for Mixed Martial Arts fighter Tom Murphy, routinely battling his opponents to the mat and raising his arms in victory.
“I hate fighting,” Mr. Murphy said as the video ended and the lights came up. “There’s nothing I find more despicable than fighting to solve a problem.”
MMA, he said, was a competition: “20 years of preparation fighting men who had prepared and trained as hard and long as I did to compete in a sport, to win or to do better than others.”
Mr. Murphy – a 1994 graduate of Cooperstown High School – wasn’t there to talk about his years in the ring (he stopped in 2008) but to lead students through an uptempo lesson on how to defeat bullies. “Sweethearts & Heroes,” the program he co-founded with Iraq War vet Rick Yarosh – a retired sergeant with the United States Army – has challenged some two million students across the country to, as Mr. Murphy said, “own the moment” to jump in and help when they witness bullying.
Tailored for each age group across the district’s K-12 student population, the Sweethearts presentation to the high schoolers began in earnest with a jolting discussion about teen suicide. The
