Very Proud Moment as an Instructor

I started teaching BJJ along with my father when I was about 18 years old. I love to teach and I take a lot of pride in my students. It is very important to me that they receive the best instruction possible to help them achieve their goals and go far in BJJ. Over the last 5 years we have worked very hard to develop a strong competition team. We've had a few very talented people train with us and do very well in competition, but unfortunately there is always things that come up in life and some have had to move or just couldn't dedicate as much time to BJJ as they used to. We still have a few high level competitors training at our main school in OKC and a very nice stable of up & comers that will be making waves in the next few years. There has been one person who has stayed with us during all this time and pretty much grown up in the academy, that is Justin Rader. Rader has been training with us since he was a teenager, wrestling half the year and training BJJ the other half. He has an incredible work ethic and over the last few years his work has really started to pay off. He won the Pan Ams and Worlds as a purple belt and he has medaled in both as a brown belt. Without the gi, he has already faced off against some of the best in his weight class, beating quite a few of them and always putting on a show regardless. Well, this week Rader received his invitation to compete with the best in the world at the 2009 ADCC World Championships. This makes Rader my first student to send to ADCC and it is even more special because we will both be competing alongside each other. That means that our school out here in the middle of the country has produced two ADCC competitors. I am very proud of my school and I look forward to watching more and more of my students rise up the levels of competition and make it to the top. Rader has a very good game for ADCC and he is very capable of pulling off some upsets. Keep your eyes on the Oklahoma boys!