Jessical Bal is a white belt who trains at Macarra BJJ/Gracie Sports in Norwalk, CT. She first popped onto my radar when I was looking at some of our fundraising reports and noticed an anomaly—a competitor who was fundraising at two consecutive tournaments (CT and...
After raising an incredible $7,037 at our 2015 Connecticut BJJ Open, we caught up with Richelle Treece, a white belt from Sandro Sampaio BJJ (all the way in Oklahoma!) who was our top individual fundraiser in 2015, to learn a little more about her story and hear about...
2013 has come to a close, and boy, was it an incredible year for Tap Cancer Out. If 2012 was the year of firsts—Our first tournament and our first major gift to our beneficiary—then 2013 was the year of twos: Two tournaments; Donations to two chapters of the Leukemia...
Earlier this year, I came across a Facebook page for Seana Rossi. A purple belt under Jorge Britto at Toronto BJJ, Seana was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at the young age of 26. She didn’t let cancer stop her from living life, and in 2008, two years after being...
Jiu-jitsu is not easy. I was a pretty regular gym rat prior to joining my first BJJ gym. I would lift and run at least four times a week, and ran half marathons and 5Ks. When I decided to join Ultimate MMA, I knew I’d be in for a challenge but I figured I was at...
Today, as I was doing some research on cancer and its effect in the jiu-jitsu community, I came across the story of Thiago da Silva “Roylerzinho” Santos. I didn’t know Thiago, but after reading about him and watching videos of support made by his friends,...
