Affordable Rashguards: About The Barsches

Welcome to Affordable Rashguards! We are Mia Barsch, Ezra Barsch and Lorenzo Barsch, and we are all jiu-jitsu competitors from Phoenix, Arizona. We love jiu-jitsu and we created and operate this business together (with the guidance of our dad) in order to help us make jiu-jitsu a lifelong career and not just a hobby. As of November 2019, Mia is a yellow belt and Ezra and Lorenzo are grey-black belts and we train out of De Boa Jiu-Jitsu in Surprise, Arizona.

Our Brazilian jiu-jitsu journey started in March 2016 when our dad took us to watch a class at Atos Rapid City in South Dakota, where lived at the time. All three of us were hooked immediately, and we trained and competed in tournaments whenever we had the opportunity. We met and trained with BJJ superstars like Andre and Angelica Galvao, Josh Hinger and Bruno Frazatto. In two years, we were all grey belts and loved BJJ so much that we wanted to do whatever it took to become world champions. Unfortunately, BJJ is still not a hugely popular sport in South Dakota and the only way for us to compete in tournaments was to drive six hours to Denver four times per year. So we decided to pack up and move to a larger city with a bigger jiu-jitsu scene so that we could progress faster, and that place was Phoenix. We packed up and moved from Rapid City to Phoenix in June 2018.

First, before we moved, we looked around for a great kids' BJJ team to join. We found that in De Boa Jiu-Jitsu, a wonderful school with friendly and caring instructors whose kids team has also won the Arizona State Championship many times in the past few years. Then we were lucky enough to find a house for sale right across the street from De Boa, and we bought it. So we can walk to class every day and never miss a class because we never need a ride. Two months after we arrived in Phoenix, we bought all the mats from a Tae Kwan Do studio that was going out of business and we turned our big upstairs room into a rolling room (pic below).

Since moving to Arizona, we train and compete a lot more! Ezra and Lorenzo train five days a week. Ezra also helps coach the Rumblers class, which is the class for 3-6 year-olds. Mia coaches kids' class every day for two hours and then trains with the adults six days per week. We do competitions about once every six weeks. Sometimes we have more than one in a month but some months we have a break. We also do big IBJJF tournaments out of town like Pan-Kids and American Nationals. Mia and Lorenzo also just did a cage fight at West Valley Rumble 2 in Glendale, AZ.

We started this website because we all love jiu-jitsu and want to make a career out of it. We know that right now it's really only the superstars in jiu-jitsu that make enough money through BJJ to live on, or people who own an academy which maybe we'll do one day but of course we can't do it now because we are kids (as of November 2019, Mia is 15, Ezra is 13 and Lorenzo is 8). But our dad owns a digital marketing agency and he gave us the idea to create an Internet jiu-jitsu business where we can make money and he can teach us all kinds of business skills for the real world while he supervises so that the business runs smoothly for our customers.

All three of us (Mia, Ezra and Lorenzo) receive profits from the business but we aren't allowed to spend all the money however we want. We are required to invest some in the business so that we can operate and maybe expand, and we're also required to put most of what we earn into savings. But we are definitely allowed to spend and have fun with some of the money that we've earned. We all handle different parts of the business. 

We chose rashguards because when we first started doing jiu-jitsu in 2016, everyone around us had cool rashguards but we just had T-shirts under our gis and when we did find rashguards they were really expensive, like $50 or more. We know from experience that jiu-jitsu can be expensive with tournaments and monthly fees and gis and patches, but still everyone likes to have cool rashguards. So that's why we started Affordable Rashguards, so that parents and adults both could find epic rashguards for not too much money so that both adults and kids can look like real jiu-jitsu players!

So please order with confidence. Our job is to take good care of our customers. We buy, train and compete in the rashguards we sell so we know they are good quality! In the meantime, if you have any questions just contact us and check out the photos below of us training and competing!

Mia, Ezra and Lorenzo with Professor Josh Hinger.

Mia getting her yellow belt from Professors Leslie and Andrew Gardineer.

Ezra and Mia with Professors Andre and Angelica Galvao.

Ezra competing at a Five Grappling tournament.

Our rolling room. It's like the Blue Basement but it's red, and upstairs. :)

Mia with Jessa Khan at IBJJF American Nationals.

Ezra's SmoothComp profile pic.

Mia and Renzo after winning 7 divisions at 2019 Colorado State Championships.

Ezra competing at a Five Grappling tournament.

Mia coaching Lorenzo at American Nationals (he took silver!).

Ezra and Lorenzo with Professor Robert Wunderlich at a seminar in Wyoming.

Mia with Professor Giva Santana. The Arm Collector!

Lorenzo after winning a tournament in Colorado.

Mia and Ezra with Professor Tim Sledd.

Clowning around with coach Tyler Guisinger and Professor Jeremy Schunneman.

Lorenzo with some of his medals.

Ezra winning a nogi match!

We all won belts at this tournament!

All three of us hanging out at one of our early tournaments.

Mia and Professor Bruno Frazatto.

A rare picture of our whole family including our dad and our dog Fernando