League News · 2026 Season

Breakers Awarded the Win After Unprecedented Finish

On August 8th in New Jersey, an unprecedented event took place between the Breakers and Brigade match that left everyone questioning what was happening. Here is a recap of the events:

The Breakers and Brigade had a back and forth battle of a match that led to a rare tie after the last race of the match. This leads to a bonus race called GridLock to break the tie.

In that GridLock the Breakers had an 11 rep lead finishing the last element of the race.

The clock expired during the final sprint of the race before the Breakers could cross the line despite running a clean race with little to no faults.

The clock had been set to a general GridLock time cap designated in the rulebook.

Officials determined the time on the time cap was clearly incorrect for the race as a time cap is never intended to impact a cleanly run race. It was recognized it was an oversight on the League match operations process for GridLock.

In a non-GridLock race, when a team hits the time cap it results in a 0 for the race. However, the GridLock race is not worth points, it’s a match tiebreak only.

This situation has two primary relevant rules in the rulebook to be reviewed in determining what to do:

“Any timing related issue (time cap, clock function, stopwatch function, etc) is reviewable under the equipment malfunction rule.”

And

“If the Grid-LOCK Race results in a further tie (indiscernible winner) the result will be a Match tie between teams unless it is a playoff Match.”

While officials were attempting to properly review the scenario according to the rules above and make an appropriate decision, the operations team indicated that the match had run too long and was already past the “hard stop” broadcast deadline of finishing the match.

Without having the time to take proper action, officials decided to maintain the tie in the moment but push the official outcome of the match to a League wide review when details could be better considered.

While rare, the practice of reviewing race results after the fact has happened before when extenuating circumstances in the moment lead to very clearly unintended outcomes.

Example: in 2025 a different time cap issue led to a League wide review in which teams voted to award the affected team race points in the Season standings to offset the effect of the issue.

In the Brigade vs Breakers review process on Tuesday the 18th, teams and officials were able to state their perspective on the situation. The results of the League wide review was an 8-1 vote among teams in favor of awarding the Breakers the win for the match.

The Brigade and the Breakers on the floor at Week 3 at American Dream on August 8.

Commissioner Mather Wiswall further states

“This is a tough situation that demonstrates some clear holes we need to improve upon as an organization. I take full responsibility for the negative impact it has had on the teams, the staff, and the sport. I apologize to the Brigade and the Breakers. We have already taken steps to learn from this and improve our processes and put every effort forth to not allow this type of thing to happen again”

Up Next

Another League meeting is scheduled for Tuesday the 25th in which new rules and processes will be presented to decide how the sport will handle similar situations in the future.

An article will be shared with the results of that meeting along with the process improvements put in place to improve as a sport.

Have a question? Email us at staff@unitedgridleague.com