Grid League 2026 – Bandits vs Sharks: Benjamin Collins Sends the Western Conference Final to the Sprint Relay

Benjamin Collins kept the Houston Bandits‘ season alive with one race to go. Fans had voted for eight bar-facing burpees and a 200-pound sandbag over a yoke in the fan-voted ringer point, a one-on-one duel inside the match. Collins was faster through the burpees, reached the yoke first and got the sandbag over it in 34.72 seconds to cut the SWFL Sharks‘ lead to 17-14.

The Bandits then threw their bonus flag on the Sprint Relay. A bonus flag is a bet a team makes before a race starts: the winner of that race takes an extra point, so the relay was now worth four. A Bandits win would have tied the Western Conference Final at 18 and sent it to Grid-LOCK, the league’s tiebreaker race. The Sharks won the relay in 3:12.59 and the match 21-15 on October 4 in Lakeland, Florida.

From the second match ever to the top seed

The Bandits are in their second season. When they met the Sharks in this same format a year ago, it was the Bandits’ second match ever, and the broadcast remembered it as a lopsided result. This year they finished as the top seed in the West, earned a bye through the first round and came into the final rested against a Sharks team that had played the day before. Owner and head coach Sophia Davenport races for them as well.

A winning start

The Bandits won the opening Partner Forward, thrusters at 185 and 125 pounds paired with a heavy jump rope. Ellia Miller and Matthew Rattay started it, Davenport and Aaron Medina took the middle, and John Young and Lauren Olson finished it 1.81 seconds ahead.

The Bandits came from behind to cross first in the Mirror, a back squat race at 315 and 210 pounds. The Sharks challenged the depth of two squats in the last quadrant, and the challenge flag works like the one in football: it forces a video review, and a rerun happens only when an officiating error decided the result. The referees ordered a rerun of the final quadrant, and the Sharks won it.

Colleen Carey raced Sedona Townsend in the first ringer point, 12 bar-facing burpees and a sprint, and it came down to a foot race at the end. Townsend won by 0.37 seconds.

Martel on the rings

The Echo is the same race run twice, 45 seconds apart. This one was sandbags over a wall, aerials, ring hang-to-handstands and a rope sled pull. Oscar Martel finished the ring element ahead of the Sharks’ Quentin Ambrioso in both Echoes. The broadcast called Ambrioso one of the league’s legendary bodyweight specialists.

The first Echo was too close to call on the broadcast, and a video review gave it to the Sharks. In the second, Brian Burr and Mason Belk split the wall between them, Natalie Schneider did the aerials, Martel took the lead back on the rings, and Rattay, Davenport and Young finished the sled. The Bandits won it by 3.03 seconds, and the Sharks led 8-7.

Young pressed 300 pounds in the Ladder, and Miller made a lift in the fourth quadrant, but the Sharks won the race. Madison Waddell had a short plan for the second ringer point, five sandbags over a yoke. “Go fast and execute, get my team some points,” he said, and he finished within 20 percent of Zaien Zafra to take a point.

Two challenges in Jack and Jill

Belk spoke to the broadcast before Jack and Jill, the showcase for each team’s bodyweight specialists. “This race is about running the cleanest possible race,” he said. “Transition, the reps, they need to be perfect.”

Schneider, Martel, Davenport, Rattay, Miller and Collins crossed first, and the broadcast called it an upset. The Sharks challenged the Bandits’ L-sit rope climbs, the review took away two reps worth about 15 seconds against a 14-second margin, and the referees ordered a rerun from the middle of the race. The Sharks won the rerun, and a Bandits challenge of the Sharks’ rope climbs did not change it.

The Sharks won the Female Triad by 1.37 seconds. The Bandits answered in the Male Triad. Belk, Martel, Burr and Collins ran what the broadcast called a perfect synchronized set of burpee box jump-overs and led into the rope climbs. The referees first gave the race to the Sharks because a Bandits player had not fully crossed the finish line with his implements, and then found that a Sharks player had run onto the Grid to make a tag, which carries a four-second penalty. The Sharks chose not to rerun the race, and the penalty gave the Bandits the win and a 17-12 score before Collins’ ringer.

The last race

Rattay spoke before the Sprint Relay with the bonus flag already on the Grid.

“You know, I think that’s the biggest thing in grid is like run smooth, run fast, but smooth first.”

Matthew Rattay, Houston Bandits

The relay has one player on the Grid at a time across eight elements. Rattay opened on the clusters, Taylor Krippner did the aerials, Belk pulled the sled, Burr took the burpee wall jumps, Martel the ring hang-to-handstands, Davenport the bar muscle-ups, Olson the kettlebells and Collins the deadlifts. The Bandits finished in 3:24.91.

Olson, Belk and Rattay were named Western Conference All-Stars during the championship broadcast later that day. The Bandits won four races in the final, and in their second season they went from a lopsided loss to this team to the top seed and a Sprint Relay with a tiebreaker on the line.

Race-by-race results