After breaking ribs and suffering one too many concussions on the basketball court, Kendall Kershaw didn't like what a year away from the game was doing to her body.
Born with a competitive streak, Kershaw was told by her doctor not to play a game she loved and she needed a new diversion to harness her athletic ability.
She's found what she was after in the sport of bodybuilding.
Entered in the bikini event, she hit the stage for her first competition - the 2015 B.C. Amateur Body Building Association Iron Ore Classic in Prince George - and posted a seventh-place finish, but that was just the start of it. She returned to the Iron Ore stage last October and not only won her bikini class but was judged the overall bikini champion. Her prize was a $4,000 travel voucher.
"I was actually up against two gentlemen when I won the voucher, that felt good indeed," Kershaw said.
Photos of Kershaw in her bikini posing on stage at Vanier Hall were part of a feature article in Muscular Development, a monthly U.S. magazine with a circulation of three million.
Since winning Iron Ore, the 20-year-old Kershaw has been training hard for her first international event which happens this Saturday. She's entered in the Empire Classic in Spokane, Wash.
"I'm really hoping to expand my horizons and meet a lot of people in the industry," she said. "It just opens a lot of doors for me to talk to some different professionals and some different magazine companies along those lines."
Working in Prince George with trainer Tiffany Breck and inspired by Jillian Michaels, a personal trainer who gained international fame as the coach on the Biggest Loser reality TV show, Kershaw began sculpting her already athletic body to the point where she was ready for the bodybuilding stage.
"I always thought it was such a fascinating thing when you have a blank canvas just to be able to create what you want," she said. "It's kind of like having the Sears Wish Book at Christmas time, you just look at things you want and work at it until you can create them and that's exciting to me.
"I was always one of those girls who was criticized for having big legs and being a little bit bigger and once I did start doing bodybuilding it was fun shaping my body and getting away from the traditional ideals of beauty."
Kershaw grew up riding dirt bikes with her dad Norm on the trails near their Pineview property, starting when she was four years old, and that gave her an early start developing her overall strength and endurance early.
She shed close to 50 pounds from what she weighed before she started bodybuilding. The five-foot-four Kershaw now competes on stage at 117 pounds.
"One of the things that pushed me into doing my first competition when I did was I had gained quite a lot of weight after not playing basketball for a year and the competition date was kind of a motivator to get the weight off," she said. "Even though I was overweight for a little bit I had a small stature and I didn't like when people said I was cute, or anything like that.
"I liked the idea of having all-around developed muscles, I'm going for an action-figure look with defined shoulders and big legs, things women wouldn't look for traditionally. I just think it gives you a really strong look."
Kershaw works at Prince George Weight Loss and Wellness as a weight-loss coach and draws on her own experiences to connect with her clients. Her company is sponsoring her bodybuilding efforts, along with Active Body Nutrition and the John Brink Group.
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