LAKELAND — It can be a grind on the grid.
For the athletes in the United Grid League — including the Tampa Bay Brigade, the best team you’ve probably never heard of — the sport can be … intense. It requires precision, timing, patience and, of course, plenty of grueling hard work and training.
The United Grid League — formerly known as Florida Grid League when it was founded in 2017 — is a combination of sports. One coach described it as “like CrossFit, football and American Ninja Warrior had a baby.”
Which is true, as the sport features a match against two teams with about a dozen or so “players” that will perform such activities as weightlifting, gymnastics and functional fitness bodyweight movements. Those athletes perform all those on the grid, which is comprised of four quadrants, each with a special move or element to complete.
The elements can range from lots of things, such as clean and jerk with a barbell, squat presses with dumbbells, exchanging a medicine ball, swinging pullups or ring pullups or even burpees over a bar. Even though it’s about who can complete the grids the fastest, Tampa Bay Brigade athlete and owner Jess Krezmien says the outcome, believe it or not, comes down to strategy.
As in who to assign which elements and quadrant to.
“It’s 13 races, with each match taking about an hour and a half, so it can really come down to milliseconds,” said Krezmien, who also runs a nutrition company and CrossFit gym in Tampa. “It’s definitely different than CrossFit. And there’s guys and girls on the team and sometimes I’m going against a guy, sometimes I’m going against another girl and so that comes down to knowing your team and a lot on the coach, with plenty of practice to see who can get the best time at any of the elements. There can be a lot of layers just for knowing when to or when not to sub someone in or out.”
Each player or athlete on the Brigade, or other grid teams, has a specific role — elements or movements they specialize in. For instance, Krezmien will more likely do bodyweight elements, while the team’s strength specialists Rebecca Rouse or Brittany Latham focus on elements that require lifting weights. However, many of the athletes are utility players, such as Dalton Herrero, a Wesley Chapel firefighter, or Isabella Carvalho, a fitness instructor in Clearwater, who can pretty much take on any element in a match.
“In CrossFit (competitions), you kind of have to be good at everything,” Krezmien said. “Whereas (in) grid, we’re a bunch of specialists. We’ve got gymnastic specialists and they’ll be flying around everywhere and strength specialists which do the heavy lifting and me as a utility player — I do a little bit of everything, but I’m not going to do the heaviest (weights) or be crazy on the rings.
“So when you’re building a team, and we have tryouts if we’re looking for players, you want to have a good combination of those people because, when you’re going all out for 10-30 seconds at a time, it matters.”
The matches, with the latest held in Lakeland, pit one team versus another, with about four per day. Teams are awarded points per the 13 races, and since the league keeps growing — with new teams added, like the New York Wolves, the newest team and the one the Brigade defeated in its latest match — the production value of the matches is quite impressive.
Not only are there plenty of fans in attendance to watch, but the match comes with a lot of judges. Also, production coverage including play-by-play and analyst announcers is extensive, with matches later being shown on the likes of ESPN.
The teams travel all over the country to compete, as well. And while grid players don’t receive a salary and still have regular day jobs, teams can earn sponsorships, like the Brigade being sponsored by Last Rep, a THC social drink.
And, of course, the teams vie for a championship. Ten teams have two more two-day matches upcoming in New York and Dallas. According to Brigade history, that team won the first grid league championship in 2017 and is looking to add another after finishing fifth in the league last season.
“I think what anyone who joins a grid team loves is going all out,” Krezmien said. “It’s definitely very different from CrossFit, in that respect, because sometimes you’re going through, like, any 20 minutes of sustained effort, whereas grid, it could be literally the fastest 10 seconds you have, and then get off the grid. So you’re leaving it all out there.
“You do your job as fast and as good as you can to then tag your teammate. It can be pure adrenaline and even stressful, at times, because you could be in a lot of races, you’ve got to be up and down, but, in the end, it’s always pretty fun.”