More than 9,000 km from mainland France, Reunion Island has become a real home for Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The island hosts three CFJJB competitions every year and now counts nearly 2,000 licensed practitioners. At the heart of that growth, one academy stands out as a reference: Foucheroll BJJ, founded in 2018 by brothers Fabien and Julien Eline.
Eight years later, Foucheroll means two academies (Saint-Denis and the brand-new location in Saint-Benoît), more than 120 adults, 80 kids and 9 black belts trained or gathered under the same banner. It is also one of the clubs that shaped OSS Academy in the project’s earliest months.
An island on the rise in BJJ
Long seen as a territory far from the main circuits, Reunion Island has built its own jiu-jitsu scene. Local competitions structure the season, clubs are becoming more professional and the level keeps rising: the number of black belts produced on the island is the best indicator of that.
Foucheroll took part in that movement as a driving club. Competitor development, strong kids’ sections, structured coaching: the academy built a complete pathway, from the first trial class all the way to advanced belts.
Two brothers, two academies
Fabien and Julien Eline, both black belts, run the academy together. The first location, in Saint-Denis, served as the base of the project. Opening Saint-Benoît, in the east of the island, marks a new step: bringing jiu-jitsu closer to practitioners in the east of the island.
Running two academies means doubling everything that has nothing to do with the mat: two schedules, two member lists, two payment streams, two communication channels to keep alive. That is exactly the point where the question of tooling becomes critical.
Growth that calls for automation
A club with 40 students can work the old-fashioned way, with a notebook and a good memory. A group of 200 practitioners spread across two locations cannot. At that scale, every repetitive task done by hand becomes a cost: hours lost every week, and a constant mental load on the coaches.
That is the conclusion Fabien and Julien reached. Their view is clear: time saved on admin is not time saved, it is time reinvested elsewhere, with the students, in the life of the academy and in new projects such as opening Saint-Benoît.
How Foucheroll uses OSS Academy
The academy relies on the app for its entire day-to-day management, across both locations:
- Members: one single, up-to-date roster, with both academies managed from the same account
- Attendance: the roll call happens at the start of class, with automatic individual tracking across the season
- Belts: progressions and promotions are recorded over time, for adults and kids alike
- Payments: memberships and fees are tracked without manual chasing
- Communication: club announcements land directly on members’ phones, without depending on a group chat
An academy that helped build the app
Foucheroll is one of the academies that shaped OSS Academy from day one. Many features in the app today came from needs raised by clubs like this one: multi-academy management, automation of recurring tasks, fine-grained attendance tracking.
That is what separates a generic booking tool from an app built for Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The clubs using it every day know exactly what is missing, and they are the ones steering the roadmap.
Do you run one or several BJJ academies? Create your academy on OSS Academy and win back time for what really matters: your students.
