Belated congratulations to Kurt Volkan on his promotion to brown belt a month or so ago!  He's got a great guard, nice pressure when passing, and some uncommon escapes from side that he is very effective with.  Also, congratulations to Rob Zecca and Marion Furtschegger on their recent promotion to blue belt!  Keep up the hard work!

A belated congratulations to Noel Myers on his first BJJ competition.  He competed last month in the white-belt division at the Tap Cancer Out tournament and took home the gold, handily winning his division with submissions in every match!  And on that note, I am happy to say that Noel was just promoted to blue-belt.  He is absorbing BJJ readily and I look forward to his future progression.

Recently I was back up in Rochester, NY, visiting and teaching a seminar at Nova Fitness.  Congratulations to Alex Blank and Casey Jordan on passing their brown-belt exam!  And a big congratulations to Steve Arnold on passing his black-belt exam!  I did want to call out that Steve and Casey put a lot of effort into their preparation and it showed, well done!  And yes, it really has been 11 years since Alex got his purple-belt!

Congratulations to Manuel Vargas and Patrick Cornejo on their recent promotion to blue belt!  They both have been training quite a while and have been consistently improving in that time.  Keep it up!

Huge congratulations to Justin Clayton and Derek Langston on their recent promotion to black-belt!  They both started training with with me as blue-belts and have been training for about 10 years in total.  Thanks to all that showed up for the test, to help, and cheer on the guys!