For the first time ever, we were able to sponsor athletes from the kid’s classes to travel to Sao Paulo to compete in Brazilian Nationals. On Friday 15 kids met at the base of the Cantagalo favela with their backpacks, pillows, and gis and piled into a van to take a 6-hour road trip to Sao Paulo.
A friend of Terere’s was kind enough to let the kids stay at his academy to help cut the cost of the trip. The low budget accommodations were not a problem for the little ones that had a blast dancing and playing games well into the night.
On both Saturday and Sunday, the kids got up early, piled into the van, and spent the day at the tournament with pre-made sandwiches and snack packs to get them through the long days of competing, coaching, and cheering for their teammates.
Larah Bandeira, one of the few females to go down to Sao Paulo to rep the team took first place in the Juvenile white belt division.
Not everyone medaled but they all had a great time!
We want to thank everyone that supported this trip by sharing our posts or donating to our Facebook campaign. A special thanks goes out to Pedra Bessa in London who registered the entire squad and Bellingham BJJ that helped finance transportation for the team!
We still have several more athletes from the project that will be competing this week. Among them, purple belt Jhonathan Marques will be competing in the purple belt adult lightweight division, assistant instructor Alexandre Ribeiro (Buda) will be competing in the adult brown belt lightweight division and black belt instructor Fabricio Silva will be competing in the black belt master 1 division.
