Match format – Washington.
The 4:00 match, Jacksonville Steel vs the Tampa Bay Brigade, featured two teams missing key members. The Steel have yet to be able to play a full roster due to player obligations and injuries on both the male and female side. The Brigade was missing their strongest female in Kimberlee Dekrey due to a knee tweak in training the previous week.
The match started with each team taking one of the first two races. From there both teams had several miscues, but the Brigade was able to take control and finish with a win.
One highlight for the Brigade was 3 of their 5 males clearing the Ladder ending at 255lb. The Steel showed some real heart with step up performances by several players to plug last minute holes to put on a strong effort given a tough situation.
The second match featuring the Orlando Aces and SWFL Sharks was a slugfest with many close races and a lot of emotion.
After an extremely close partner forward ending in a Sharks win, the Mirror was just as close appearing to end in the sharks winning by a half a second. After a ref review, it was determined that the final rep referee cue took just a second too long and affected the outcome of the race. After a race re-run, the Aces reversed the outcome and were fired up heading into the Female Echos.
In the Echoes, the Sharks leveraged well executed, waterfall bar muscle ups and extremely fast burpee over bar to overcome any advantage the Aces had on the barbell, most notably with head coach and strongest female player in the League, Taylar Stallings. At the end of the Echoes, the Sharks had swept all 4 creating an insurmountable lead even with some late race wins by the Aces.
Two incredible stand out performances included Kevin Barraez for the Aces moving a HUGE portion of the barbell work for the guys, and Roran Scott for the Sharks was absolutely everywhere on the GRID performing at a very high speed.
Overall, another incredible day of GRID. Be sure to grab early bird tickets to the next match in your area for 40% off. Go to thefgl.com/old/tickets, now.
Final Scores:
Tampa Bay Brigade – 23 Jacksonville Steel – 8
Orlando Aces -15 SWFL Sharks -19
Northern Conference Standings after 2 matches.
Tampa Bay Brigade ( 2 – 0)
SWFL Sharks (1 – 1)
Orlando Aces (1 – 1)
Jacksonville Steel (0 – 2)
