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The colored belts took over the majority of the mats on Saturday, July 13 as the IBJJF New York Summer Open took place in a moist basement gymnasium at the City College of New York. What felt like another world that captured you for the full day, the schedule was packed with stacked divisions one after the other.
By 10:40, the purple belt males were beginning to infuse the blue belt males on the ten mats and by noon the brown belts had joined in as well. The black belts melded in and before you know it, the divisions were closing up and open weight categories were forming brackets.
Here are the results and standouts that made their way through the hot basement atmosphere, against tough opponents and onto the podium:
Blue belts were mostly dominated by Team Lloyd Irvin members, Malachi Edmond at light-feather, Derrick Holmes at feather and Sodiq Yusuff at light. At rooster, Dean Lewis and all of his 5’2″ self managed to submit his way to his second IBJJF gold ever. He always weighs in below the weight limit and although he just moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia to train at 50/50, he is already reaping reward.
Purple belts showed skill from all teams allowing GFTeam, Alliance Marcelo Garcia, Team Lloyd Irvin and others to take the podium as no one team dominated. Standouts Daniel Goss and Lucas Mattos Moutinho of GFteam took gold in their division and also closed out the open weight division as middleweight and super-heavyweight. The takedowns of Lucas were ferocious and his cardio allowed him to keep up a fast pace throughout all of his matches.
Alliance Marcelo Garcia gained the most points as a team and in turn was granted the first place trophy. For the brown belt males, three divisions from light to medium-heavy were won by members of the Marcelo Garcia crew. Gianni Grippo won the lightweight category moving up from his normal featherweight territory, Dillon Danis who is now making his way into the IBJJF competition podiums won the middleweight division and Matheus Diniz who came from Brazil to train with Marcelo full-time won the medium-heavyweight division.
The brown belt open class was interesting purely because the winner, Maximilian Bohanan, placed second in his weight category, middleweight and the second place Kevin Mahecha placed third in his division, lightweight. Male heavyweight Tim Spriggs placed third after meeting Kevin in the semi-finals but wasn’t able to dominate the match as all of his other matches during the day.
The females brought on high-level competitors from all over: Texas, Atlanta, California, Florida, Boston, Maryland, Puerto Rico, Pennsylvania and more.
Blue belts were dominated by featherweight Annie Xiong and lightweight Anna Burdette from Alliance Marcelo Garcia although more female blue belts placed on the podium also from their team. Heavyweight Michelle Welti of Big Brothers took the top spot of the open weight podium after she defaulted gold in her weight division. Second place went to the middleweight champion Jessica Adams of Nova Uniao with Annie Xiong and fellow featherweight Viviana Eva Velez of Carlson Gracie Team in Puerto Rico taking the third place spots.
Purple belts only had light-feather, light and middle, spreading out the athletes who wanted a fair amount of matches to higher weight categories. Danielle Alvarez of GMA Alvarez BJJ placed second in both weight and absolute proving her comeback to Jiu-Jitsu is getting right back to the top. Double gold went to Katie Merrill of Boston, although a native of New York, who fought her way through five matches. Sera Kim and Jessie Carpenter won their respective division but opted out of the open weight, satisfied with their performances.
For the full results, click here.