First competition
First competition at featherweight and I was already questioning every life decision that led me to voluntarily pay money to get strangled in a high school gymnasium. 😅
Usually, I’m one of the smaller people in the room anyway, but somehow every woman in my bracket looked like they cut from middleweight the night before. Coach kept telling me to “use movement and angles,” which sounded great until a girl snapped me down hard enough to make me see another dimension. Knowing I was down on points, I shot the ugliest double leg of my life and basically tackled both of us into the boundary table.
The referee reset us in the middle while my team cheered me on. Honestly, I thought I was done after that because my grip strength had completely disappeared two minutes in. Everything changed when she got a little too comfortable in my closed guard and left an arm hanging out there like a gift from the jiu-jitsu gods. Managed to lock up an armbar so suddenly that even I was surprised it worked.
Once the adrenaline wore off, I realized I’d been clenching my jaw so hard during the match that my teeth hurt more than the rest of my body.
Drove home with my medal hanging from the gear shift because I wanted to feel dramatic for at least one day. Still got absolutely smashed in training Monday by the 14-year-old orange belt 🙃.