The Swan City BJJ Competition Team represented Grande Prairie, and Canada as a whole in a big way during the PBJJF championships in Baltimore, Maryland.
Nicole Paine, a self described “proud team momma” explains the team started as a way to get Grande Prairie BJJ youth athletes to explore competition on the world stage. She says the win only serves as a testament to the kids’ hard work and dedication to excellence in their sport.
“About a year and a half ago we decided to start the Swan City Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu Competitive Non-profit to see if we could get our children on a bigger scale,” she says. “We found a world competition that was in Baltimore Maryland and they’ve been fundraising and training very hard for the past year and a half to do so.”
“We just recently got back from there where the kids made us so very very proud, coming back with 13 medals, and eight of those are gold, so world champions in those, with four silver and one bronze, and put our gym on the top three for the Kids Gi out of 32 nations.”
Paine emphasizes the importance of the event for both the athletes and their parents when she describes the feeling of excitement and anxiety they collectively felt the first time they stepped onto the world stage.
“It was the first time ever for all the kids, one of them has competed abroad in other martial arts, but as for the jiu-jitsu team, this is the first time ever any of these kids have ever competed on a world stage,” she says. “It’s kind of a sobering moment really, you’ve worked so hard and you’ve really thought about this day and you’ve fundraised for so long, so many hours, cold days doing bottle drives, and you walk in and you see the stage set up and you see the medals ready, you see the kids are anxious and excited, and of course they’re nervous, they’ve never been on something this large.”
“You’re very proud, emotional even, because you have ages from 10 to 17, so some of these are big moments and something they’ll never forget.”
The martial arts mom says after such a strong first showing, her kids and their teammates “caught the bug” to continue competing at the highest level. She says plans are already in place to compete in Las Vegas, Ireland, and maybe even further, saying “the world is their oyster” coming out of their powerful performance in Baltimore.
