COPA 2015 - Emmanuel Takes Double Silver
Met up with my team mates Emmanuel Donate, Mehdi Jataloui and Mohammed Ibrahim at COPA in Austel GA this memorial day weekend. It was a pretty good turnout. It's good to see a lot of younger kids participating. The talent in this sport is going to get really, really good in the next 10-15 years. The kids are rolling with such technical ability that by the time they are 18, they will be much higher level than what we currently see in most adult divisions.
Mehdi and I didn't compete. I went to show support for Emmanuel and found that Mohammed was there ref'ing and competing. Mohammed is a young kid (20 years old) and eats, sleeps and breathes jiu jitsu. He's easily winning his matches in these smaller tournaments (walked away with gold this weekend) Worlds is coming up at the end of May and he will be going to try to cement his place on the world stage. I have no doubt he will do well. He's very insightful when it comes to exploiting holes in other people's game. Unfortunately I didn't get any good pictures of Mohammed rolling as I had to leave early for work. Perhaps next time.
Emmanuel had a great showing as well. He easily won his first roll and lost to a high level wrestler in the finals match. Emmanuel has an interesting mix to his game. He is a berimbolo guy, but will take top position just as easily.
It was good to see these guys represent the school so well. Able competitors and great ambassadors for the sport. OSS!
(Click on each pic to see the full size)
