Friends Fight Together… La La La La: The Main Line United In-House Tournament

Friends Fight Together…La La La La: The Main Line United In-House Tournament

By: Val Worthington

I love Flight of the Conchords. They sing a song called Friends, in which they talk about all the things friends do together. When you train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, one of the things you do is fight together, sometimes in the academy and sometimes in competition. I have seen friends compete against each other and then, win or lose, leave everything on the mat and then move on with their buddyhood.

If you stay in it long enough, jiu-jitsu is a good source of lasting and profound friendships. If you stay in it long enough, you may also find yourself staying friends with those people as you and they open their own schools, move away, and expand their grappling circles wider and wider. You may find yourself going to their grand openings and getting together with them when you can, reliving the times when it was all about your own training and dreams of teaching and coaching.

On Jan 20, I found myself spending the whole day at Main Line United BJJ in Ardmore, PA, working a scoring table at the in-house tournament MLU owners Steve Bowers and Paul Miller ran. Due to my longstanding friendship with Steve, I am a frequent visitor, and I like the same things about MLU that I like about Princeton BJJ: high-quality instruction, low meatball quotient, great training and training partners, and people who laugh at my jokes.

It probably comes as no surprise, then, that coaches, students, and supporters from the schools that participated, including a contingent from PBJJ, laughed, yelled, encouraged, swept, choked, hugged, and congratulated, sometimes all in the same minute. Everyone took the competition seriously and went as hard as they could, and everyone stayed friendly and communal even in the heat of things.

Back in the day, it was more common for jiu-jitsu schools to be a bit more insular. There was less cross-pollination, and there were fewer visitors. Nowadays, for a variety of reasons, the community is more interconnected, and my personal belief is that this benefits us all. PBJJ and MLU have a lot in common and have often demonstrated their support for each other in the past. This tournament confirmed everyone’s commitment to collegiality. Thanks to Steve and Paul and MLU for being great neighbors and friends.