A monstrous mission: Mohawk Warrior driver wants to crush pediatric cancer

Sep. 9—KERNERSVILLE — Bryce Kenny, who gets to play with a 12,000-pound toy for a living, couldn't stop talking about Legos.

The 35-year-old High Point native, who drives the Great Clips Mohawk Warrior monster truck, has experienced plenty of thrills during his seven years as a driver on the immensely popular Monster Jam circuit. He'll tell you, though, that they don't measure up to the thrill he got playing Legos one day with Ollie, a young boy in Nashville, Tennessee, who was battling cancer.

Through his nonprofit Live Like Warriors foundation — and the generosity of his foundation supporters — Kenny had donated more than a dozen sets of Legos to Ollie, an avowed Mohawk Warrior fan who actually had his parents give him a mohawk before chemo treatments caused his hair to fall out. Kenny delivered the Legos personally — with his signature gelled-up mohawk — then took time to enjoy them with his newfound "mohawk buddy."

A video on the Live Like Warriors website captures the special day and reflects what a powerful impact it had on Ollie and his family.

"You just never know what you can do with a volunteer army making a coordinated effort to help fill specific needs," Kenny says, "and that's what Live Like Warriors is all about."

Next weekend, Live Like Warriors will host a daylong Warrior Rally to benefit pediatric cancer. The event, being held in Kernersville (where Kenny now lives), will feature several Monster Jam drivers and their trucks, as well as a car cruise-in, live music, food trucks, an "RC Alley" where kids can play with high-tech remote-controlled cars, and an evening of worship.

All proceeds will go to Live Like Warriors.

According to Kenny, who is also a motivational speaker, the event grew out of a book he's publishing later this month called "Geared For Life: Making the Shift Into Your Full Potential." When his publisher mentioned holding a book launch event, Kenny suggested the Warrior Rally instead.

"My thought was, what if we created the biggest pediatric cancer fundraiser that the Piedmont Triad has ever seen?" he says. "And it just snowballed from there."

The Warrior Rally dovetails nicely with the book, in which Kenny writes that one of the gears — or foundational beliefs — of his life is the gear to help others.

"It's about getting my eyes off myself and putting them on other people," he explains. "Sometimes I have to make the conscious decision to grab the gear-shifter and go into being built for others."

And it helps having such a visible platform as Monster Jam.

Ironically, it was dragsters and not monster trucks that captured Kenny's attention growing up. His grandfather owned a drag strip in Kentucky, and Kenny spent summers there helping out during the week and racing in the junior division on weekends.

His grandfather eventually sold the track and bought a Top Fuel dragster, so after Kenny graduated from Wesleyan Christian Academy, he chased his dream of becoming a professional Top Fuel driver. He actually got his license — no easy feat — but he couldn't find a sponsor, so he gave it up and took a job in corporate America as an executive recruiter.

A couple of years later, Kenny was invited to Monster Jam University, and he decided to give it a shot. To his surprise, he not only earned a diploma, but eventually was offered a full-time driving job, and he's loved it ever since.

Before long, he began getting opportunities to help families battling pediatric cancer. The disease hits close to home for Kenny — his niece had a tumor on her kidney when she was 2 — so helping those families became a passion.

"I realized if I had a volunteer army that I could tell when specific needs pop up, and we made a coordinated effort to fill those needs, we would be unstoppable, and we could create so much good that we would make a huge impact," Kenny says. "So that's what we've been doing."

One family needed furniture. Another needed a car to drive their child to and from treatments. Whatever the need is, Live Like Warriors tries to meet it.

"It's really about just maximizing the platform while I've got it, and hopefully being able to make this something that goes beyond just driving a Monster Jam truck," Kenny says. "And whenever I'm done with it, and my name's no longer up in lights, I want to be able to look back and feel like I maximized it as best as I could."

jtomlin@hpenews.com — 336-888-3579