November brought our final three Fall Tour dates and they made an impact! On November 2nd, we held our first-ever Tap Cancer Out Long Island BJJ Open. Even with our flagship Connecticut event not too far away, we always knew that there was a huge BJJ community in the NY region. We were thrilled to add it to the Fall tour, and it did not disappoint. The BJJ community came together to crush any first-year tournament numbers, with $163,214 raised! Our original goal was $50,000 so we had to up it twice and it was still surpassed! We had over 400 competitors hit the mats for a great day of BJJ. Long Island’s first Top Fundraiser was George Segarra who surpassed $10,000 in his first try! Ronan Kelly took home the Top Youth Fundraiser title with $5,635 raised. Soca BJJ took home the Top Fundraising Team title with $12,168 raised by their 33 members.
Next up, we traveled down to the Philadephia area for our Philly BJJ Open. One of our largest Philly events had over 700 competitors with just shy of $200,000 raised. It was an amazing day on the mats, once again proving the power of the BJJ community! Our Top Fundraiser was, once again, Shannon Schade with $26,385 raised. Shannon has been the Top Fundraiser at this event for the past 4 years! Incredible job Shannon! Owen Wyatt took home the Top Youth Fundraiser title with $2,146 raised. Inversion BJJ took home the Top Fundraising Team title with $28,970 raised by their 7 members.
Our final stop this fall was our Massachusetts BJJ Open in Danvers, MA. This is the only two-day event that we host due to the number of competitors, which was over 1.000 this year! Our goal of $350,000 raised was surpassed with TCO ultimately raising $363,601. We were met with hundreds of spectators over the weekend, which made the energy in the gym incredible. Robby Warford once again took home the Top Overall Fundraiser with over $20,000 raised, while his school, New England United was the Top Fundraising Team with $41,019 raised. The Fritz sisters (Dakota and Winter) were our Top Youth Fundraisers with $4,371 raised.
We only have two short months until we are on the road again for the Winter Tour, launching in San Diego on January 11th. We hope you all enjoyed your time with us in 2024 and we will see you on the mats in 2025! Happy Holidays!