17 year-old prodigy Helena Crevar has just reached the next stage of her journey through the BJJ ranks, as she has just been promoted to purple belt by John Danaher. Crevar is coming off the biggest achievement of her competitive career last month, as she was able to come away with a silver medal from the under 65kg division at ADCC 2024. She actually made history at the same time, becoming the youngest competitor to ever reach an ADCC final and one of a tiny handful of competitors who have stood on the podium as a blue belt. Although Crevar has been a top prospect for years now, this performance announced her arrival at the highest level of the sport.
Crevar has been training since a very young age and has been an incredibly prolific competitor, so it’s only natural that she was going to progress at a rapid rate anyway. Then at the end of 2022 she made the decision to move across the country to train under Danaher at New Wave Jiu-Jitsu. That ended up having a huge impact on her career, as she’s enjoyed some fantastic success since then. After less than a year of training at New Wave Jiu-Jitsu, Crevar was able to take home a silver medal at ADCC Trials and only lost on points to the champion.
She improved upon that performance the next time around, as she actually won ADCC West Coast Trials 2024 and earned an invite to ADCC 2024. That set the stage for her to make history by winning a silver medal there, but she’s also competed for pretty much every major promotion in the sport in the meantime. She even travelled to the UK to compete at Polaris 28 and won the promotion’s lightweight title. It‘s been a fantastic few years for Helena Crevar and now that she’s been promoted to purple belt, she has the opportunity to face a higher level of competition when she does IBJJF events in the gi as well.
Helena Crevar announced the news that she had been promoted to purple belt by John Danaher in a recent post to her official Instagram account:
