Derby Alumni, David Rickels and Shelby Yardley, are some of the few Derby High School graduates that have achieved a famous status.
Rickels is a professional Mixed Martial Artist. Yardley has gained fame from acting in the second season of MTV’s show ‘Are You the One?’.
Rickles graduated from DHS in 2006. According to the official Mixed Martial Arts website, Rickles has lost only a total of three times and won sixteen of his professional matches.
Among the MMA world, Rickles is known as ‘The Caveman.’ He has been able to build his career and make himself noticed at the age of 26.
According to an interview with mmamania.com, Rickels won the 2013 Bellator lightweight tournament. Rickles was originally not supposed to fight until he received a call that would let him know.
Rickles was weighing in at 205 pounds and in less than eight weeks from the tournament Rickles lost the weight and weighed in at 155 in order to qualify to fight.
“What I think a good fighter does is fight for his company and I did it. I was pretty fat and enjoying my time off. I knew I had a hard training camp in front of me starting that next day,” Rickels said to mmamania.
On the other hand, Yardley didn’t always know that she wanted to pursue acting.
She graduated with the class of 2010 and left high school with the ambition to become a psychiatrist.
“I saw myself living in California, already being some sort of psychiatrist,” Yardley said. “I’m moving to LA in July like planned but I will be doing acting rather than being a psychiatrist.”
Her time was devoted to athletics and her aspirations to become a psychiatrist. Acting never really came to her mind.
“Going through college you change your mind… lot. And through all of the classes of the majors I went through (psychology, biology, and graphic design) they were great and everything but just not things I could see myself doing everyday for the rest of my life,” Yardley said.
Her job on MTV has inspired her to continue a career in acting.
“I definitely wish I would have known I was going to want to take acting seriously later on because I would have been involved more in theatre throughout school,” Yardley said.
-Story by Maricela Cardona
