Marc Cramer has almost 100 students in his jiujitsu academy, about half of them children. But there is one little girl who stands out for him. Jasmine Harris, now 8 years old and a soon-to-be third grader at Truckee Elementary, was a small, scrawny 5-year-old when she started at the Charles Gracie Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Academy inside Truckee’s Revolution Athletics Training Center, which Cramer owns with his wife, Kelly. Despite her petite size and initial fear, Jasmine kept training in the sport, a ground-based martial art that is a form of submission wrestling.
“She was just a little squirt, a real quiet girl who doesn’t come across as an athletic kid,” said Cramer, who holds a brown belt in jiujitsu and has been practicing the sport for 11 years. “Her willingness to keep coming back, to keep working — that’s not an easy thing — is what inspired me.”
Cramer was so inspired by Jasmine that he sent a letter to Moonshine Ink titled “Perseverance.” In it he wrote: “[Jasmine] entered tournaments, lost, sometimes cried, but always came back for more. She continued to train, practice her technique, and develop her skills. She always has a smile, and she wipes the tears back and keeps going when the training is hard. Not even a broken wrist suffered at the playground stopped her from moving forward. Her unwillingness to give up now has her winning more than she loses.”
You wouldn’t know it by watching Jasmine practice that she used to break into tears at competitions, where she often faced opponents who were bigger and more skilled than her (divisions are based on age, belt, and weight, not gender). Now, she grapples expertly on the mat with sparring partner Caleb Clifton, 6, practicing techniques like an arm bar and choke.
Jasmine’s parents started her in jiujitsu because she asked to try the sport. At age 4, she would watch as all her friends at daycare would leave early to go to jiujitsu class.
“She wanted to go really, really bad,” said Jasmine’s mother, Kim, the office manager for the Tahoe Center for Health and Sports Performance.
Jasmine’s father, Aaron, also wanted Jasmine to try jiujitsu to help her with self-confidence and self-defense. In the beginning, Jasmine was the youngest and the smallest in the class, earning her the nickname “Peanut.”
“She would just get smashed,” said Aaron, the snow removal supervisor at Sugar Bowl and owner of Sierra Fence Solutions.
At her first competition, Jasmine ran off the mat crying. When she finally won her third match, Jasmine knew she could overcome her emotions and persevere, according to Kim. She’s now competed in seven tournaments. In the last one, the Charles Gracie Invitational in Tracy in November, Jasmine faced 13 boys in her division. She got third place. This time she shed tears for a different reason.
“She cried because she had beat the second place winner, but he got more points,” said Aaron. “She wanted to fight him; she said it wasn’t fair.”
Cramer is all the more impressed with Jasmine because of the nature of jiujitsu, which unlike many other sports is confrontational.
“Golf is not confrontational, the ball doesn’t react back to you,” said Cramer, whose three children also do jiujitsu. “It’s not the easiest thing to overcome that; It can be scary, especially for a girl. Yet she managed to do it in a peaceful and stoic way. I wish I could be more like that. I am learning lessons from an 8-year-old.”
Even though jiujitsu pits two opponents against each other, the bigger competitor doesn’t always win. The goal of jiujitsu is to get the other person to “tap out,” or submit, which is achieved through leverage, technique, and positional dominance.
“Bigger doesn’t mean better in this sport,” Aaron said.
Although size is not the determining factor, competitors still must master technique and become comfortable with confrontation. Cramer sees that Jasmine has come a long way in that department. He also notices how she has grown in other ways, holding herself higher, making eye contact, and having a stronger voice.
“As she evolves, her ability to handle confrontation in any form, verbally or otherwise, she’s developing that,” he said. “That’s all I want.”
Jasmine, who is now a gray belt, admits that even after three years of training she still gets scared when she goes up against someone bigger than she is. But she does it anyways. And that’s why Cramer is so proud of her.
“Life is hard,” he wrote in the Moonshine Ink letter. “It’s easy to get tripped up, to falter, and doubt yourself . . . Quitting is an easy solution to discomfort. When we see people strive and reach and get back up and go again, we are inspired. Jasmine is a person that you can watch and be inspired by. She faces every goal with steely determination, with one simple plan — don’t give up.”
~ Revolution Athletics is hosting the fifth annual Lake Tahoe Classic Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament on Aug. 25 at the Truckee Community Center. For more information, contact (530) 448-5346, bjjtruckeetahoe.wordpress.com. Comment on this story below.
