Grid League 2026 – Lions vs Brigade: Brigade Win the Duels, Drop the Opener 23-16

A rookie walked the length of the Grid on his hands, dragging a sled, and announced himself to the entire league. It was the loudest moment of the Tampa Bay Brigade‘s opening day, and it came in a match the deeper Fort Lauderdale Lions took 23-16 at the Miami International Fitness Expo on May 23.

The Brigade won where their specialists could win: both standard ringer points and a bonus-flagged Jack and Jill. The Lions, last year’s championship runner-up, won nearly everything else in a rematch of two 2025 playoff teams.

The streak survives

Owner, coach, and player Jess Krezmien has never lost a bar-facing burpee ringer, and on Saturday she needed every hundredth of a second to keep it that way. She and Janine Nicole of the Lions danced together at the start line, then traded reps to a finish the referees had to separate at :19.74 to :19.76. The broadcast desk called it the closest burpee duel they had ever seen.

Dalton Herrero made it two for two in the ringers later in the match, running down Paula Leyes in the suicide sprint even with the longer distance the men cover. Tampa Bay’s specialists held up their end all day.

Announce yourself, Nathan Tsuji

The Brigade threw their bonus flag on Jack and Jill, the bodyweight showcase that this time was all handstand walking, and rookie Nathan Tsuji made it look like a one-man race. He covered half the Grid in a single diving pass, walked the med-ball leg looking forward like he was out for a stroll, then strapped on a belt and handstand-walked a sled drag the full length of the Grid to seal a three-point win. A Lions challenge of the rep count came back as their own counting error. Head coach Tomas Facenda had said before the race to keep an eye on the new handstand walker. Understatement.

“It’s zero zero. Whatever happened in the past happened. You can only affect what you can. Don’t worry about the other side.”

Brigade head coach Tomas Facenda, mid-match

Where it slipped

The margins elsewhere were not large, but they were consistent. The Mirror ended in a photo finish at the simultaneous bar drop, and the Lions’ runner reacted first; a Brigade challenge of the quadrant-three reps came back clean and cost a flag. The Lions swept both Echoes behind a gymnastics pair that butterflies ring muscle-ups with a med ball between the legs, and cashed their own bonus flag on the second one. The ladder came down 58-54 after a missed fourth bar, and both triads went to Fort Lauderdale, the women’s at the legless rope climbs.

Garrison Matthews, who worked nearly every race, took the fan-voted ringer duel against Ryan DeMattie, eight burpees into a 200-pound sandbag over the yoke, and finished close enough to keep the point even in defeat. The Sprint Relay closed it out, with Christopher Cioffi, last season’s bodyweight specialist of the year, and Marissa Oxenford keeping Tampa Bay inside the cap for the final point.

The Brigade leave Miami 0-1 with the two best individual results of the day and a rookie the rest of the league now has to plan around. Facenda’s reset-to-zero approach gets its next test in two weeks in Lakeland, and if the specialists keep winning their duels, the Brigade only need the middle races to tighten for these matches to flip.

Race-by-race results

The Brigade are the official Tampa Bay team of the United Grid League

Coed teams racing head-to-head, and the 2026 season is just getting started.

Get TicketsWatch the Full MatchMeet the BrigadeShop Brigade GearHow Grid League Works

Up Next