Hurricane, power outage, pandemic, earthquake: Work resilience for two female gymnasts in Puerto Rico

Courtesy of Valentina Solo

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After falling in love with the Puerto Rican lifestyle, culture, and people, Cherese Matthews and now wife Valentina Sollo decided to uproot the US and buy a CrossFit subsidiary in Puerto Rico.

So in 2016, the couple, who met at a fitness conference in Orlando, Florida, ditched their apartments and cars in New Jersey and Florida to start a new chapter.

But when they got to the subsidiary it was due for purchase, all the equipment was gone, and the previous owner was rolling floors.

“What happened?” Matthews said of her reaction at the time.

What happened was that the old owner didn’t communicate with his buyers and sold all of his equipment to other gyms, so there was ultimately no affiliate to buy or buy out.

So what happened next?: Although there was no gym to buy, Matthews and Solo didn’t hold back.

They got the former members’ contact info and “just called them” and told them they’d be offering CrossFit classes on the beach for free until they figured out their next month.

We had no equipment, no car. “We were walking everywhere,” said Matthews, who was eventually given her friend and Solo a pair of dumbbells and a medicine ball, and “rain or shine” they showed up on the beach to train whoever attended. “We were going to do this job,” Matthews said of their situation at the time.

Then one day, while they were walking by a local shopping mall, they noticed some shipping containers in the parking lot. Their immediate thought: Why not turn a shipping container into a gym?

“We can make this work,” Matthews said.

So I got an Amazon Prime credit card and “maxed it out” by buying as much equipment as possible for my 400-square-foot gym, and started charging $5 for no-booking classes.

So where are they today?: Just over six years later, Matthews, a CrossFit Level 3 coach, and Solo, who was born and raised in Venezuela, are the owners of CrossFit Rincon in Rincon, Puerto Rico.

They have a thriving gym with 135 to 170 members, depending on the season, and they’ve had a “record year” in their 3,500-square-foot facility. Moreover, they have created a community that prides itself on being inclusive, with a special focus on serving minority groups, such as women entrepreneurs and the LGTBQ+ community.

But the path to where they are today has not been easy at all.

After their rough start getting started in 2016, Hurricane Maria battered and devastated the island in 2017, causing some to lose power for months.

Knowing a hurricane was coming, Matthews and Solo flew to New Jersey before it hit.

Their plan was to return to Puerto Rico in a few days, but the hurricane was so destructive that the airport did not open for almost a full month.

While in the US, Matthews and Solo did what they could by hosting fundraisers throughout the month in support of hurricane victims.

When they returned 28 days later, they discovered the house they were renting and their gym had been flooded and they still had no power.

In fact, blackouts due to poor infrastructure and politics around electricity in Puerto Rico mean that couples often have to work without electricity. Sometimes they have to cancel their lessons late at night.

“If you sneeze so hard the lights go out,” Matthews joked about the unpredictable electricity across the country that drives many to own generators or solar homes.

The next hurdle for Matthews and Solo was, of course, the global pandemic that hit the world a year and a half after the devastating Hurricane Maria. For them, like many other gym owners, that meant shutting down their businesses for six months.

Business got so dire that at one point during the pandemic, they came within 48 hours of closing their doors for good, but at the eleventh hour the government allowed them to reopen, so they decided to go through with it again.

Finally, in the midst of the pandemic, Puerto Rico was hit by a major earthquake that once again knocked out the power, adding more fear and uncertainty to their business and community in the process, they explain.

The big picture: No one would blame Solo and Matthews for calling him quits and packing him in, but they say everything they’ve been through has made them and their community stronger.

“From the beginning, it was one hurdle after another…but I feel like I don’t regret anything. It just made us so resilient,” Solo said.

Matthews added, “I feel proud that I’ve faced obstacles, because I feel it builds character. It allows you to be empathetic. It allows you to be kind, and to understand that hard work and effort is the only way to get what you want.”

And through the obstacles, there are moments that remind them why it’s all worth it.

“You have these moments where a member walks inside a gym and they’re so excited that they’ve been able to do something they’ve never done before, and all those hurdles just kind of go away,” Solo said.

More than anything else, Matthews and Solo are proud of what they’ve built, and are proud to have become a “safe space” for the more than 130 die-hard members showing up day in and day out.

“Going to the gym allows people to be happy and forget (everything) for an hour. That’s what makes it so important to stay connected to your community no matter what you’re going through, both as a member and as an owner,” Matthews said.

Solo added, “I can tell you that’s why we’re still here. The support of our community has made it so amazing.”

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