A different kind of grappling

I spent the weekend in New York City grappling with a bunch of women of relatively similar size, weight, and jiu-jitsu experience to mine — and did so successfully. After five grueling matches, two won on submission (armbar from back for those who care) and three won on decision, I took home a gold medal. It meant a lot more than usual to me for a number of reasons:

• It had the highest level of talent that I’d experienced in a tournament, forcing me to really earn the wins. I attribute this in part to the fact that New York has a ton of people and the tri-state area has some of the most renowned and competitive jiu-jitsu academies on the east coast.
• It was the most I had ever traveled for a competition. Prior to this, the farthest I had traveled was New Haven, CT. While a 4-hour train ride isn’t that far, it’s still farther than any of the women in my bracket likely had to travel, and it’s unlikely that they had to sleep in an unfamiliar bed, eat different food, and otherwise disrupt their routines as substantially as I had to by coming to New York from Boston.
• It was the greatest number of matches I had to win for gold. For any gold medal I’d previously won in a tournament, I’d had to win as few as one and many as three matches, depending on the size of my bracket and the tournament rule set (round robin vs single/double elimination). To win gold at this tournament, I had to win all five matches.
• I was coming off one of my hardest, most stressful weeks on the job. In the week…