European Cadet Cup Portugal

Portugal Cadet Cup

Day 1

Jacob More (-55kg) won a Gold medal in the first day of the Cadet European Cup in Coimbra, Portugal. Jacob won his first fights against Daniele Pelliccia of Italy in just over a minute by ippon. He defeated his next four competitors, Nicolas Dierickx of Belgium, Andre Diogo of Portugal, and Viljar Lipard of Estonia all by ippon to make it to the final match against Sergei Bogoslovskikh. In a match that lasted close to 7 minutes, Jacob was finally victorious by ippon. With 5 total ippons, Jacob More is the first Team USA Cadet to win a Gold medal in the European Cup.  

Carlos Zarzab (50kg), Teagan Yuasa (55kg) and Leah Hiatt (52kg) also competed against very strong and highly ranked athletes, but all fell victim in the first round.

Day 2

Sara Golden (-63kg) won her first two matches by ippon over Marie Leconte of France and Malena Riveiro Mourino of Spain, the second match in just 20 seconds! After losing her third fight to Joana Crisostomo of Portugal she came back to win against Francesca Zorzi of France. In the final fight of Repechage, Sara fell in 4 minutes to Ella Andersson of Sweden and eaned a 7^th place finish.

Issei Barefoot won his first fight against Ruben Martin Garcia of Spain by ippon. He fell in his second match to Ion Botnaru of Moldova in just under 1 minute, but came back to beat Karl Priilinn Turk of Estonia in just 9 seconds to win a Bronze medal.

With 10 wins for the USA Cadet Team, this is by far the best results we have seen out of the Cadet team! “These kids gave it their all and I could not be happier with the way the team responded and bonded together” said coach Robert Golden.

The next two days will be full of training camp in Portugal with over 400 other athletes on the mat. Congratulations again to the USA Cadet Team for such a successful tournament.