Glendale, Queens native Jillian DeCoursey holds a master’s degree in mental health counseling from Iona College.
Families seeking the services of an experienced mental health counselor in the city and Long Island may want to know about her approach to therapy for their adolescent sons or daughters: empowering clients “with sufficient knowledge and skills to manage their distress so that the client no longer needs therapy,” per her entry on resource website Headway.
Imagine her patients’ surprise when, upon Googling her, they learn about DeCoursey’s other job: Hard-hitting, world-ranked mixed martial artist. Not your average 5-foot-2, 38-year-old therapist.
“You go to the doctor — especially if you go to a therapist — you’re Googling them, right?” DeCoursey told The Post during a recent visit to Long Island MMA and Fitness Center in Farmingdale, where she trains. “So they Google me, and the first things that come up are always my fight stuff. So it becomes a big, ‘Oh, that’s so cool!’ And they tend to open up more.”
Just wait Google begins to autocomplete “jillian decoursey invicta fc atomweight champion.” That just might happen if Wednesday’s championship fight, the Invicta FC 49 (8 p.m. ET, AXS TV) main event in Hinton, Okla., goes DeCoursey’s way against 105-pound titleholder Jessica Delboni.
DeCoursey (5-3, two finishes) only has eight official pro MMA fights on her record, but a 7-1 amateur mark plus a tournament bout last year that officially counts as an exhibition are a better indication of her experience in the sport.
She’s been training martial arts for well over a decade, although DeCoursey has hit career benchmarks at a later stage than the typical fighter. A self-described “late bloomer,” the former collegiate point guard at the University of Bridgeport and Hunter College didn’t begin her martial arts journey until after completing her scholastic journey, around age 24. A dislocated kneecap and chipped bone — compounded with a pre-Affordable Care Act lack of health insurance — halted her Brazilian jiu-jitsu and Muay Thai progress after just two months.
But nine to 12 months later, DeCoursey was off and running on the mats.
“When I came back, it just took off from there,” she said, “competing all the time, just training nonstop.”
A career in MMA wasn’t necessarily in the plans. At age 30, while goofing around in the gym, her coach asked if she’d like to compete in the sport. As DeCoursey tells it, she went with the flow. “Yeah, that sounds pretty cool,” she recalls.
A late start in the sport wasn’t such a hindrance, she says, thanks to the timing. Women’s MMA has grown considerably in the eight years (and one day, to be exact) since her amateur debut, a victory via armbar at a local show at York College Arena in Jamaica, Queens. That was three months before the UFC adopted the strawweight division (116lb. max), the next closest weight class from DeCoursey’s current competitive home, atomweight (106lb. max).
“Now, you have all these kids that are coming up doing it. When I started, that wasn’t really the case,” DeCoursey said. “A lot of people were in the same boat as I was. They went to school; they had a career. … There were a few that were starting young, but most of them had careers and stuff. So it’s like, ‘Alright, you could do this.’ ”
DeCoursey believes the late start was the right path for her, in particular.
“I don’t think I could have done it younger,” she says. “Life was too crazy. I don’t think, mentally, I could have handled it. It happened at the time it needed to happen.”
Building up an impressive amateur résumé caught the attention of Invicta, the top women-only promotion in North America and the most notable outside of Asia with an atomweight division. Thrown to the fire quickly, she already has faced former Invicta 105-pound champ Alesha Zappitella (in her third fight) and current UFC strawweight Elise Reed (a Cage Fury FC strawweight title fight).
The big break with Invicta came on May 11 against well-regarded Lindsey VanZandt, whom DeCoursey beat by decision as an amateur but nonetheless entered the bout as a sizable betting favorite. The New Yorker, who now lives on Long Island, needed just 61 seconds to show how silly the handicappers looked and secure one of the most spectacular finishes in her weight class’ history.
DeCoursey connected with a missile of a right hand that put VanZandt’s head on a swivel, followed by a left that knocked her down. She threw in a pair of heavy hammerists before the referee could make the save on the stiffened VanZandt.
“I just remember seeing her fall to the ground, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s where I want you. That’s where I want to go,’ ” DeCoursey said. “So I just followed up. Then I remember the ref pushing me off, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God! This just happened.’ ”
The highlight-reel finish made the rounds on social media — particularly Twitter, where DeCoursey frequently interacts with fans of both her and the sport in general — and made her the obvious choice to face champion Delboni (12-3, two finishes) in her first title defense after beating Zappitella in January.
Delboni, ranked No. 3 in the world by both Sherdog and Fight Matrix, has DeCoursey’s respect. But the challenger is wary of falling into the same trap as past opponents by affording her “too much respect.”
“She has an intimidating presence in the cage, which, that’s part of the sport, right?” DeCoursey says. “So it’s not buying into that, not getting sucked into her cage presence, and just being someone to actually push her out of her comfort zone because, if you watch all her fights, everybody plays to her comfort zone. So it’s like, ‘No, not playing your game. Make you play my game.’ ”
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