Grid League 2026 – Lions vs Breakers: Lions Close Out the Breakers 19-16

The Fort Lauderdale Lions carried a one-point lead into the Sprint Relay of their Eastern Conference semifinal against the Palm Beach Breakers on October 3 in Lakeland, Florida, and they spent their super wild card to protect it. The super wild card is a once-a-season move that lets a team bring any available roster player into a single race regardless of the normal roster rules. They used it on Paula Leyes, who had been out of the lineup, and gave her the six freestanding handstand push-ups near the end of the relay.

The Breakers got through the snatches first, and the Lions took the race back over the elements that followed. Taylor Sturgis went clean through nine burpees to a ring set at 9 feet 9 inches, Leyes finished her push-ups, and Ryan DeMattie closed with three clusters at 250 pounds to stop the clock at 3:18.94. The Sprint Relay pays three points to the winner, so the 16-15 lead became a 19-16 win and a spot in the Eastern Conference Final against the New York Wolves the next morning.

A lead built on the barbell

The Lions won the opening Partner Forward by 2.48 seconds. Briley Smith, Janine Stallings and Julio Delgado started it, and DeMattie and Tricia Davis were on the Grid when the Lions reached the fourth quadrant first. The Mirror followed, a barbell race where two players work through front squats at 255 and 170 pounds quadrant by quadrant, and the Lions won it by more than ten seconds with Bailey Yarbrough, Caroline Moline and Alexia Perez-Miviere in the rotation.

The first ringer point, a one-on-one duel inside the match, went to the Breakers’ Roran Scott on barbell clusters. Lily Finger finished 1.16 seconds behind her to keep a point for the Lions.

The Echo is the same race run twice, 45 seconds apart. The first one took the Lions 3:23.12 against the Breakers’ 3:23.43, a margin of 0.31 seconds that the broadcast could not call until the result was announced. The Breakers took the second Echo by 0.87 seconds.

The Ladder is the strength race, with players alternating down the Grid and lifting a 200-pound sandbag for the men and a 150-pound sandbag for the women over a yoke that gets higher in each quadrant. The Lions outscored the Breakers 81-73, and Bailey Yarbrough cleared the top height, which the broadcast said made her the first woman to finish the sandbag ladder this season. The Lions led 10-8 at the halfway point.

Cardona against Niroda for the third time

The second ringer point was a handstand obstacle course, and it matched Eric Cardona against Loredana Niroda for the third time in this duel. Each had won once. Cardona led from the start and walked across the finish line backwards in 24.58 seconds. Niroda finished outside the window that the rulebook sets at the winner’s time plus 20 percent, so the Lions took both points and a 12-8 lead.

The Female Triad was run twice

The Breakers took Jack and Jill, the rope-climb showcase for each team’s bodyweight specialists, by nine seconds to close the gap to 13-10.

The Lions crossed first in the Female Triad, a five-element race of barbell clusters, freestanding handstand push-ups, burpee box jump-overs, dumbbell shoulder-to-overheads and a 60-foot handstand walk. Breakers general manager Matt Hornaday threw his challenge flag, which works like a challenge flag in football: it forces a video review, and a rerun only happens when an officiating error decided the result. The referees found a transition fault on the Lions’ side in the last two quadrants and ordered both teams to rerun the shoulder-to-overheads and the handstand walk.

Janet Durant, Lily Finger and Megan Medeiros won the rerun for the Lions. Hornaday challenged a fault call in the rerun as well, and the referees ruled there was no conclusive evidence to change it, which left the Lions with the race and a 15-11 lead.

The finish

The Breakers won the Male Triad by 1.78 seconds, with Sturgis subbing in for Delgado to finish the Lions’ side inside the cap. Fans had voted for double kettlebell hang clusters in the fan-voted ringer point, and the Lions sent Alexander Velez, who had spent most of the season coaching, against the Breakers’ Evan Newman. Newman won it, and the Lions went into the Sprint Relay ahead 16-15.

Briley Smith had the snatches at the start of the relay, and his plan was simple before the race.

“Just got these snatches somewhere around the beginning. I just got to do my job and be fast, be flawless when it comes to our reps, and just make sure we’re not faulting at all, get back, and then let the rest of the team do their thing.”

Briley Smith, Fort Lauderdale Lions

The Lions won seven of the 12 races, and the relay was the one that decided the match. The win sent them to a 9 a.m. Eastern Conference Final against the New York Wolves, the top seed in the East, less than 24 hours later.

Race-by-race results