A contingent of jiu-jitsu athletes from Rise Combat Sports in Winkler held their own at the ADCC Toronto Open earlier this month.
Dorian Fox, Darrius Joof, Isbel Hernandez, and Marcos Gaubert went up against martial arts athletes from around the world at the event Feb. 3 in Toronto.
Gaubert, who is the head coach at Rise, came home with a silver medal in the advanced/under 100 kg. division.
It’s been a few years since Gaubert has stepped foot on the mat competitively.
“I’ve been away from competitions for awhile,” the South American champion shares. “Being back was more to motivate my students; I was going to just have some fun. Coming back with a silver medal, it’s a very cool thing.”
After a tough semi-final match against a strong opponent from El Salvador, Gaubert advanced to the finals, where he lost the gold medal to an athlete from the country of Georgia.
Gaubert’s students, meanwhile, all did him proud.
Eleven-year-old Fox, who has earned a string of gold medals across western Canada and the U.S., competed in a heavier weight class at this event: the 11-12 years old advanced/under 36 kg division. He managed to take his match into overtime and secured a fifth-place finish on the world stage.
Joof, a two-time provincial champion who competed at the European Championship in France just a week earlier, secured two wins by submission and a fifth-place finish in the challenging adult intermediate/under 83 kg class, going up against 32 other athletes.
Finally, Hernandez, another provincial champ, also had a strong performance at the Open, competing in the same division as Joof and making it to the eighth-place finals.
The Pembina Valley jiu-jitsu community is a close-knit one, Gaubert says, and it’s growing.
“Our team now, it’s close to 150 people,” he says, adding they have about 15 provincial champions in that group. There are classes for all ages and skill levels.
Gaubert observing it’s a sense of community combined with athleticism that draws many to the sport.
“It’s very common to see a parent start training, and then after awhile their kid start training as well,” he says. “It’s very inclusive. We have kids, we have a men’s team, a ladies team. We have people literally from five years old up training with us.”
Next up for Rise Combat Sports athletes is the Western Kids Open in Regina in April. They expect to send upwards of 20 local youth athletes to the event.
Gaubert also has his eyes on competing himself at the World Master event in Las Vegas in August.
