CENTENNIAL, Colo. — Kory Schreiner decided to take a leap of faith when he invested $250,000 into a youth sports center franchise in Centennial. His gym, Redline Athletics, was open for just two months before area businesses were forced to shut down due to COVID-19.
"We barely started rolling and getting everything going," Schreiner said. "We shut down on the 15th of March."
Redline Athletics is a youth training facility with a focus on kids 8 to 18 years old. The Centennial location is one of only three in the whole state of Colorado. The other locations are in Longmont and Westminster.
Schreiner was able to keep a few salaried employees on staff after he closed his doors but he had to temporarily let go of his coaches and trainers.
"We just figured the best thing for them was to try and get them unemployment," Schreiner said. "I didn’t have any hours for them."
Kendyl Grover is one of the part-time coaches at Redline. He also owns his own business called Top Flight Athletics.
"I was in here (at Redline) for about two weeks," he said. "The first week in March, I was getting kids training and we were making some huge progress with them. Obviously, we were hit with a huge brick wall because of the stay-at-home order. I've stuck to video training sessions from my YouTube page recently."
Grover will start working again inside Redline soon. And Schreiner learned some good news recently: Starting Wednesday, five people will be allowed in the gym at a time. It's that small sense of normalcy that is giving Schreiner some hope.
"I’d like to get our coaches back in here and get them some hours," he said. "I want to let these kids come in and see what we offer."