We’re giving year-end awards at the end of 2017, and we want your help with nominations. These are open nominations for each of the award categories. Our intent is to honor deserving grapplers throughout the region — and to remember some of the best moments of the year gone by.

Eligibility: The geographic range of eligibility is from the DC metro area down to the southern tip of South Carolina. That means any person or academy in DC, Virginia, North Carolina or South Carolina is eligible. (If we get a ton of great entries we may break the awards out by state, but we’ll see — it’s year one!). Here are the award categories, with a brief description for each.

AWARD CATEGORIES:

1. Jiujiteiro of the year 

2. Jiujiteira of the year

Among the best practitioners you know, who really shined this year? Competition is a big piece of this, but shouldn’t be all of it. Who made great strides, won honors, and rocked the house with consistency during 2017? Who is a shining example generally, but had a particularly great year?

3. Tournament coach of the year
4. Self defense instructor of the year 

There are a lot of great instructors and academies, so we want to give two distinct awards to recognize folks that focus on the competition side as well as the self defense aspects of jiujitsu. Can you vote for the same person for both? Sure thing, pal: we’ve always said the distinction between self defense and sport is largely artificial. (It’s also possible that we give these awards broken out by state.)

5. Most Inspirational Athlete of the Year
Who motivates you? Who did something truly great this year that can’t be measured in medals or belts or trophies? Who is a great representative for the art that you can point to and say “yeah, that’s who you can be if you train”? This answer to one or more of these questions might be your Most Inspirational Athlete of the year.

6. Match of the year (men)
7. Match of the year (women)
What match tore the house down in terms of exciting action and competitive thrills? What match featured expert technique? Bonus points if both competitors were local, but nominate your favorite match. And definitely send us a video or a link to a video if it exists.

How do you nominate? There are three ways:

1. Send an email to cagesidewhup@gmail.com.
2. Make a post on Facebook and tag Dirty White Belt radio so you’re sure we see it. Or …
3. Nominate someone IN PERSON at Toro Cup 8, Oct. 14 at Cageside Fight Co. in Durham. We’ll have a nomination box for you!

Nominations will stay open until Dec. 1, 2017. Nominate early, nominate often!