Wild news · Player feature
The Championship Core Walks Back Into the Wild Locker Room
One year after hanging a championship banner, the Atlanta Wild finished with the worst record in the league. That whiplash now has a third act. Three players from the 2024 title roster are back for 2026, and two of them own league MVP trophies.
Wild fans remember how good 2024 felt. Atlanta beat the SWFL Sharks 18-16 for the United Grid League championship in their first season after relocating from Gainesville. They won the first seven races of that match and closed it out in the Men’s Triad. The players who made that night happen are walking back through the door.
Fischer is back full time
Amanda Fischer was the engine of the title run. In the opening Partner Forward race, where two players of opposite gender complete reps at stations in each of the Grid’s four quadrants, Atlanta fell behind early on a fault. Fischer and partner Rolle sealed the race with a pistol stick jump over the finish line, and the Wild reeled off seven straight race wins from there.
She was named 2024 UGL MVP after winning Utility Player of the Year in 2023. She played collegiate softball, made team CrossFit Semifinals twice, and coaches. At 5’7″ and 170 pounds, she has a 200-pound snatch, a 255-pound clean and jerk, and a 400-pound deadlift. She sat out last season aside from one match. For 2026, she is back full time.
Hibbard and Long complete the reunion
Robert “RJ” Hibbard gives Atlanta its second MVP. He won the award in 2021 during the Gainesville Wild days, after joining the team in 2019 off a DM. His path into the sport runs straight through Wild head coach Dan Jackson. Outside the Grid, Hibbard is an Olympic weightlifter who has competed at Nationals, with a background in physical therapy and an anime rotation that runs through Dragon Ball, Pokémon, and Full Metal Alchemist.
Patrick Long has been with the organization going back to Gainesville. The Army veteran out of Northern Virginia, listed at 6’0″ and 200 pounds, spent the time since the title run shifting his training toward Olympic weightlifting as both a competitor and a coach.
All three were away from competition last season. Now they return in the same offseason, to the same roster, under the same coach who built the championship team. The team that lost every match last season is not the team showing up this year.
A deeper league to come back to
The field is bigger than the one Atlanta conquered in 2024. The UGL added the New York Wolves and Carolina Flight for 2026, so the Wild are reloading into a deeper league. Jackson has been on the sideline since before the league was even called the UGL, and he gets his championship pieces back just as the competition gets harder. The full breakdown of the returning trio is in the league’s full story.
Last place stung. Wild fans now get to watch the roster that won it all take another swing.
The Wild are the official Atlanta team of the United Grid League
Coed teams racing head-to-head, and the 2026 season is just getting started.