Bailey Heinsohn · ADCC
She was nine.
Costa Mesa · April 29, 2023
Her first ADCC. Intermediate. Two divisions. She was still just a kid watching the mats. Four hundred seventy-five days later, she would walk into T-Mobile Arena.
April 29, 2023 · Costa Mesa
Before anyone knew what came next.
There was no world title attached to this day. No invitation. No arena. Bailey was nine years old at her first ADCC, entered in the Girls 9–10 Intermediate 28 kg and 32 kg divisions.
Between matches, the photographs show the part results never do: sitting on the floor, eating a snack, hugging a younger child, watching the mats and waiting for her name to be called again.
She left Costa Mesa with gold at 28 kg and bronze at 32 kg. She also left with an official loss on the record.
Nothing about that first day guaranteed what came later.
What mattered is that she came back.
Before T-Mobile Arena. Before the invitations. Before the world titles. Just a nine-year-old kid at her first ADCC.
Bailey at 11 · Looking back
“It just clicked.”
Bailey talks about the first time competition became something she loved — before the ADCC story had become what it is now.
The space between the photos
A first tournament only becomes a journey if there is a second one.
Eight months passed. Bailey turned ten. When ADCC appeared on the calendar again, she did not return to the same place in the bracket.
Austin · December 16, 2023
The next time, the bracket said Advanced.
Intermediate
→ Advanced
Bailey entered three Advanced weight classes in Austin: 28 kg, 32 kg and 36 kg. Seven matches in one day.
She won six of them, all six by submission. She also lost one final on the official record.
That matters here because this is not the story of a kid who never lost. It is the story of a kid who kept asking for more competition.
One ADCC had become two. Intermediate had become Advanced. Two divisions had become three.
Losing did not make the next bracket smaller.
By this point, Bailey already knew what an official loss at ADCC felt like.
The response was not to protect the record. The next few entries went the other direction: heavier, then older.
Bailey on losing · January 2025
Learn from it. Keep going.
By eleven, Bailey could explain something the results never show: getting tapped hurts, but quitting means you stop learning.
Long Beach · January 20, 2024
27.8 kg.
The next bracket was 44 kg.
Bailey weighed 27.8 kg — about 61 pounds. She competed at 32 kg first.
Then she entered 44 kg.
The other two athletes in that bracket were recorded at 38.0 kg and 44.0 kg. One outweighed Bailey by about 22.5 pounds. The other by about 35.7.
Bailey beat both of them.
But the part that belongs in this story happened before either match started: she chose the bracket.
One week later · Bailey was 10
“I just wanted a challenge.”
Bailey explaining, in the moment, why a 62-pound kid entered a bracket with athletes around 95–98 pounds.
Las Vegas · March 29, 2024
The next test was older.
Two months later, Bailey was ten years old and weighed 29 kg.
She entered her own Girls 9–10 Advanced 32 kg division — and the Girls 11–12 Advanced 32 kg division.
Four matches. Two divisions. Two gold medals.
Heavier in Long Beach. Older in Las Vegas. The results were changing, but so was the kind of challenge she was willing to enter.
Somewhere along the way
The Opens stopped feeling like isolated Saturdays.
There was now somewhere for the journey to go. The inaugural ADCC Youth Championship was coming to T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
January 2024 · Before Youth Worlds
Las Vegas was already the goal.
Asked about the big stage, Bailey admitted she had been scared enough during a previous walkout to feel like she might puke. She went anyway.
April 29, 2023 → August 16, 2024
475 days.
One first tournament had become a path. Twenty-one ADCC matches sat between the child in the Costa Mesa photos and the final at T-Mobile Arena. Match 22 was for the title.
T-Mobile Arena · August 16, 2024
Ten years old. T-Mobile Arena.
Four hundred seventy-five days after her first ADCC, Bailey walked into the inaugural Youth Championship at T-Mobile Arena.
This was no longer a local Open. The room was bigger. The stakes were bigger. Bailey was still ten.
She defeated Thea White in the semifinal. Match 22 was the final against Ella Desario.
Bailey won.
For the first time, the journey had a title at the end of it: inaugural ADCC Youth Champion.
Bailey at 10 · Months before the title
“Even if you don't win gold…”
Before she ever walked into T-Mobile Arena, Bailey was already describing competition as courage, experience and a life lesson.
And then the arena emptied
A world title can look like an ending.
For Bailey, it became another point on the path. The next season was not one giant moment. It was more training, more travel, more ADCC Opens and more chances to find out what still needed work.
A world title didn't make her stop coming back.
Atlanta. Dallas. More ADCC Opens. More rounds beginning from zero.
The point was no longer proving that she had once won Youth Worlds. She kept entering because the next version of Bailey still had to be built.
Then, on October 28, 2025, Bailey became the first athlete invited in the Girls 11–12 division to the 2026 ADCC Youth World Championship.
First ADCC: Intermediate. Next Youth Worlds: first invited.
Austin · August 9, 2026
Back at Youth Worlds.
Three years after Costa Mesa, Bailey returned to ADCC Youth Worlds. This time she was not the kid discovering the circuit. She arrived as a returning champion and the first invited athlete in Girls 11–12.
She won the Girls 11–12 40 kg championship.
She already had her second Youth World title.
The day could have ended there.
Then she entered the Absolute.
After the 40 kg world title
She had already won.
Bailey had weighed in at 38.4 kg. The other three athletes in the four-person Absolute bracket came from the 44 kg division.
She entered anyway.
Bailey submitted Yasmin Campanha in the semifinal and Cali Grounds in the final to become the inaugural Girls 11–12 Absolute World Champion.
The result came after the choice.
That choice connects the thirteen-year-old champion back to the kid who kept entering heavier brackets, older divisions and one more match.
For the kid who has not started yet
You don't have to train like Bailey.
Bailey's message is simpler: try it. If you love it, keep going. If you don't, at least you stepped onto the mat and found out.
Back to the beginning
The first photo on this page was taken before any of it.
Before Advanced. Before T-Mobile Arena. Before the first invitation. Before two Youth World titles and the inaugural Absolute title.
Bailey was nine years old, standing at the edge of the mats at her first ADCC.
Everything else on this page happened after she stepped onto them.
That is why the beginning matters. Bailey's ADCC story did not start with a world title. It started with a first entry, then another, then another.
Somewhere, another kid is standing at the edge of the mats now, wondering whether to step in.
Bailey's story is still being written. So is theirs.