To our Crispim BJJ Family,
It is with such a heavy heart and tears in my eyes that we have made the difficult decision to temporarily close both the Pleasanton and San Ramon academies effective immediately through Sunday, March 22nd. Please know that there are NO known cases of COVID-19 at either of the gyms or with any of our members. However research has shown that taking preemptive measures, such as closures, are the most effective ways of limiting the spread of the virus, and we want to make sure we are doing our part for the well-being of our communities.
The decision was so difficult, but in light of all of the local school districts around us closing, we felt it best to do our part in promoting social distancing while our communities and world attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Over the past ten plus years of working to grow and build Crispim BJJ, I never in a million years believed that I would be writing a letter like this talking about any type of closure. The day that I opened our doors, my dream and goal was to provide an incredible place to train and be a part of a special community which would last for the rest of my life and then be passed on to my children to continue. And today as I write this letter, even though we are temporarily stopped, I believe with my entire heart and soul that we will get through this and be an even better and stronger community. I would also like to say that we are absolutely overwhelmed by so many of the responses we received to our last email. I don’t think I cried as much as I did while reading emails and texts from members of our team who were offering their selfless support to the academies and team. To say that we are truly blessed would be an understatement. I can’t even put into words the gratitude we feel for our team and everyone stepping up to work together to make sure that we have an academy and a team to come back to.
With this said, we are again asking our team to continue with their membership payments, if you are able to do so, so that we can continue to cover all of our fixed costs and to secure the future of our academies and our amazing staff. As mentioned in our previous email, we will never ask for anything for free. We are asking for you to continue your payments now, and for those who are able to do so, in return we will do the following once we make it to the other side of this:
* for those who have prepaid memberships, we will either be extending prepaid memberships by time missed due to the covid-19 or giving privates to compensate for your missed time- your choice.
* for those who pay monthly, we will either provide privates to you equivalent to time missed or extend your memberships upon your return in phases to spread out the academy losses over several months- your choice.
* for our newest team members who are still within their initial 6 months, we will have to continue your billing during those months (as we previously explained in our last email), but will either extend your memberships upon your return or will provide private classes equivalent to the time missed-your choice.
And for those of you who need to go on hold, please message us as we understand that there are a lot of us who are affected by this and we would never want anyone to be in a bad situation because of us.
And in addition, for all of our members who are able to keep their memberships active, we will be setting up a private Facebook page so that we can post instructional videos for our classes to keep the learning moving forward. We also are exploring other options and ways to continue training and learning should we find the need to extend the closure. And in addition, we will be doing a series of free seminars for adults, who continue their support of the academy, upon all of our return. We will also be hosting several free Friday night “parents nights out” for our children, who continue their support of the academy, upon all of our return.
Please know that we are always keeping the faith and are fully committed to opening our doors again as soon as possible. This is truly a difficult time for all of us, and together we can stay strong and make it through with an even stronger community bond. Thank you all for the continued support. I just can’t put into words how truly appreciative we truly are! We will keep in close contact with you all as we move through this, and will send out another email within the next day or two with info regarding our online learning. Stay safe, be well, and this too shall pass!
All our best,
Crispim and Michele, Jeremiah and Beto