Meet Mariah Bahe, The 16-Year-Old Fighting To Become A Prominent Native American Olympic Boxer

In many ways, Mariah Bahe is like any 16-year-old; she loves spending time with her family watching movies, and she stops by Starbucks
SBUX
whenever she heads into town.

But she’s also one of the United States’ top-ranked junior boxers, with six national titles under her belt, and she won’t stop until she’s fighting in the Olympics.

Indeed, Bahe’s story is amazing. And it will be chronicled in intimate detail in a short documentary from Olympic Channel that premieres Thursday, Mariah: A Boxer’s Dream. The film documents Bahe’s life living on Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the United States, following her through her 2020 National Silver Gloves victory as she continues to conquer challenges in pursuit of her Olympic dream.

Bahe comes from a long line of boxers. Her grandfather J. Cal Bahe, a U.S. Marine, began boxing at 15. He started out at what was then the Damon Boxing Gym under the coaching of his uncle, Lee Damon. Cal Bahe turned to coaching after Damon’s passing in 1980.

Six years later, Cal Bahe opened the Damon-Bahe Boxing gym in Chinle, Arizona, teaching boxing to his children, including Mariah’s father, John C. Bahe Jr. Today, John Bahe is the head coach at Damon-Bahe Boxing.

Boxing runs in the Bahe blood…but John Bahe initially wanted Mariah, his only daughter and youngest child, to pursue other sports.

“He never wanted me to box; he wanted me to do volleyball and cheerleading and all that,” Bahe says by phone. “I always told him that I wanted to box, and we fought for a year. He obviously didn’t win,” she adds, laughing.

Bahe had her first fight at the age of eight and recalls crying before she got into the ring because she was so scared. But eight years and six national championships later, it’s clear she was born for this.

John Bahe agrees.

“He’s really proud of me and I don’t think he would change anything,” Mariah says. “From there on, I just knew I had to box.”

Bahe doesn’t remember exactly when she set her sights on the Olympics, but her family provides some context. At the gym hangs a poster of U.S. women boxers Christina Cruz, Franchón Crews and Queen Underwood, who are identified as USA Olympic hopefuls.

“When I was 10 or 11, my dad remembers me asking him, ‘Who are those women and why are they on the poster?’” Bahe recalls. “When I was young I thought only celebrities and movie stars were on posters. He told me about the Olympics and Team USA, and from there on I told him I want to fight in the Olympics and I want to be on Team USA.”

Bahe is too young to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, but she’s laser-focused on her goal of qualifying for Paris 2024. Until then? “Win as many national titles as I can,” she says. Naturally.

There are some, but not many, Native athletes who have risen to the level of role modeling: former NFL quarterback Sam Bradford, NBA guard Kyrie Irving, former WNBA player Ryneldi Becenti. Bahe would have loved to have more Native athlete role models growing up. Now, she’s the one who can play this role to young Native athletes and women alike.

“To be a role model for women is really amazing,” Bahe says. “I never thought I would be a role model to older people, and I never thought I’d be at this level with boxing. For me it’s that I’m setting a high bar. Being 16 and a female and a Native American, it’s really amazing, and we really hope to be farther than we are now.”

In addition to providing a glimpse into Bahe’s family life and training, Mariah: A Boxer’s Dream also clears up widespread misconceptions about the realities of living on a reservation. “I think the film really shows how we live and what we have to do,” Bahe says. “We have to haul wood every winter to stay warm, to keep my house and the gym and other people’s houses warm.”

Two of the biggest misconceptions she thinks people have about life on the reservation? “That we live in teepees and that we get checks from the Navajo Nation,” Bahe says. “We don’t have things handed to us. We have to start from scratch and work our way up from the bottom, like I did with my boxing.”

Chinle is extremely isolated; the nearest Wal-Mart is two hours away. Bahe has to travel about five hours to get decent sparring from other teams, as hers is the only team on the reservation. “If you’re in a city, you just go down the road and there’s boxing gyms,” Bahe says. “For me, I have to make that extra effort. I have to put that extra motivation in and that extra work in just to be better than I am now.”

When she’s not training, Bahe loves spending time with her parents and siblings (Jeremiah, 24; Joshua, 22; Isiah, 20 and James, 18), whether it’s watching movies or going into town to stockpile snacks and hit up Starbucks. “We try to spend all the time we have together until I leave,” she says.

After she checks the Olympics off her list, Bahe wants to join the Air Force and become a pilot. She eventually sees herself returning to the reservation to become a police officer.

“I want to help any way I can,” she says.

Bahe didn’t have a favorite part of the documentary…rather, she recalled her favorite part of watching the film.

“I couldn’t pick my favorite part because I loved the whole film,” Bahe says. “But I really loved watching it with my dad. I could see him getting emotional, and it was really nice for me to watch with him.”