Category Archives: sports

The “W’s” of Working Out

Posted on by
Reply
stockimages, freedigitalphotos.net

stockimages, freedigitalphotos.net

The symphony of treadmills and weight machines always gets a little louder this time of year-whether it’s a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, a few too many latkes or too much eggnog, or the gift of a gym membership-getting fit is one of the most popular goals at the start of each year. Here are some options to suit every workout style.

Who: The Gym Rat

What: Santa Barbara Athletic Club has awesome equipment and a vast variety of workout options, including Pilates, Spinning, indoor and outdoor weight rooms, swimming, squash and racquetball.

When: Monday – Thursday: 5:00 am – 10:30 pm; Friday: 5:00 am – 10:00 pm; Saturday: 6:00 am – 8:00 pm and Sunday: 7:00 am – 8:00 pm.

Where: 520 Castillo Street.

Wear: For a guilt-free, post workout treat, head to the new supplement/protein bar at Montecito Athletic Club (40 Los Patos Way, Montecito).

Who: The Mom

What: Enlist with “General” Stacey Cooper on a BootyCampSB mission to “raise your fitness level and your booty to new heights.”

When: Kids work out for free at the Parent-Child Booty Camp every Monday from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m.

Where: Girsh Park, 7050 Phelps Road, Goleta.

Wear: Head to Eddie Bauer (130 S. Hope Ave., La Cumbre Plaza) for the “essential daypack bottle” loaded with all the gear you’ll need to survive a day with the kids.

Who: The Beach Babe

What: Try Moms in Motion’s Stand Up Paddle Board team for “the most fun you can have on the water-while improving your balance, upper body and core strength.”

When: Sundays at 8 a.m.

Where: Leadbetter Beach, Shoreline Drive and Loma Alta.

Wear: You can rent equipment or splurge on a Kialoa -Nalu Stand Up Surf Paddle from Paddle Sports of Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara Harbor).

Who: The Couch Potato

What: Try a Jazz Dance or Hip Hop Class at Santa Barbara Dance Arts (formerly Santa Barbara Jazz Dance Academy). You’ll have so much fun you won’t even realize you’re working out till the pounds start sweating off.

When: Jazz Mondays at 6:45 p.m.; Beginning/Intermediate Hip Hop Wednesdays at 7 p.m.; Advanced Hip Hop Thursdays at 7 p.m.

Where: 1 N. Calle Cesar Chavez #100.

Wear: Pick up your dancing shoes at Harlequin’s Theatrical Supply (17 W. Gutierrez St.).

Who: The Yogini

What: Yoga Soup has a fun variety of classes, with owner Eddie Ellner’s good karma philosophy of “pay what you can,” for his eclectic “soupy mix” of classes.

When: Tuesdays at 5 p.m.; Tuesdays; Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at 6:30 p.m.; Saturdays at 10:30 a.m.; and Sundays at 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m.

Where: 28 Parker Way.

Wear: Head to Drishti (130 E. Canon Perdido St.) for a Manduka eKO eco-friendly yoga mat and a comfy pair of their “Beyond Yoga” pants or capris that are so stylish you’ll want to wear them all day long.

Who: The Jock

What: At Dr. Bob Wilcher’s Killer B Fitness, this Chiropractor/Personal Trainer will whip-we mean motivate-you into shape whether your goal is to run a marathon or sweat off a few sizes in his few frills, no mercy private gym.

When: By appointment, call 805-448-2222 for information.

Where: 126 Powers Ave.

Wear: Lucy (3825 State St., La Cumbre Plaza) offers a new “core power collection” of tops stay soft, comfortable and dry, no matter how much you sweat.

Who: The Hiker

What: The Santa Barbara Sierra Club offers a variety of hikes for every fitness level from the occasional hiker to the diehard backpackers.

When: Hikers meet weekly on Wednesday nights at 6:30 p.m. and Friday nights at 6:15 p.m., destination are chosen at the meeting points.

Where: Santa Barbara Mission, Laguna and Los Olivos Streets. Also visit www.santabarbarahikes.com for additional hikes scheduled every weekend from a variety of locations and terrains.

Wear: Head to Santa Barbara Oufitters (1200 State St.) to pick up one of Ex Officio’s “Insect Repellent” hats, which are great for those sunny, buggy hikes on the beach. Plus, rain or shine, you can take a trek up their indoor climbing wall.

Originally published in Santa Barbara Magazine in 2009.

Leslie Dinaberg Watches a Game With John Maloney

Posted on by
Reply
Courtesy Freeimages.net by Naypong

Courtesy Freeimages.net by Naypong

Think herding cats is tough? Try organizing 2,900 kids into 268 teams, then dispersing them among 25 fields for games and practices each week. Once the kids are settled, then try keeping their parents in line. Sound like a challenge? It’s all in a day’s volunteer work for AYSO Commissioner John Maloney.

Leslie Dinaberg: When did you start volunteering with AYSO?

John Maloney: I started as a referee a long time ago, when I was 12.

I grew up around soccer. I played in college (at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA) and then when my youngest daughter Meghan started playing I started to ref and just went on from there, so that’s 12-13 years.

LD: And what was it like then?

JM: We had about 2,500 kids back then…we used to practice all over town and games were all over town. We didn’t have UCSB back then, Girsh Park didn’t exist, so on a given Saturday you had kids (all over town). You would have about one or two fields per location so it was tough getting goals set up and making sure we had refs at each field.

LD: What a huge logistic nightmare.

JM: We probably have actively involved over 20 people to help make things happen. Each age group has administrators that run it.

LD: How do people begin as volunteers?

JM: They start out coaching, and then they say “Have you guys ever thought of …” and we say, “No, how would you like to…” Suggestion is a great foot in the door to being a volunteer.

…We’ve got referee administrators for both genders. Making sure we have refs. …(There’s our) picture day coordinator, our volunteer coordinator, ….our party angels, that run the volunteer party at the end of the year. … People find things they like, you get them doing it and you try to get them to do it for five or six years so you get some consistency, and it helps.

LD: Do people generally stay for the life of their child’s involvement?

JM: Generally but … we get a lot of people who stick around after their kids grow up.

LD: What are the biggest challenges you face?

JM: There aren’t enough fields … we’re by far the largest youth sports organization in town. And for most kids it’s just from the week after school starts until the week after Thanksgiving, but for the talented kids that want to keep playing we have all-stars and that goes all the way to June or July.

LD: After all these years of involvement, do you think the girls and boys teams behave differently?

JM: Oh, absolutely. I’ve coached both and yeah, there’s a difference. You motivate them differently. In AYSO you don’t yell at kids, you try to keep it positive, but you can discipline a boy differently than a girl. … But both are really rewarding, especially this age group (8-10) because you see so much improvement throughout the year. You look at the first game and the last game and there’s a huge improvement. I just love to see kids when it starts to click for them.

LD: Do you have any tips for parents to be a better soccer/sports parent?

JM: Just watch. Every year we have problems with parents … the cheering stuff is good, but the parents that try to get into coaching that aren’t coaches … we get some that stand behind the goal and talk to the kids. We get some that counteract what the coach is trying to tell them to do. That’s kind of frustrating sometimes.

LD: I assume you’re not going to be the commissioner forever and ever and ever.

JM: Not if my wife has anything to say about it.

LD: What kind of advice would you give to your successor?

JM: Get a lot of people to help you, and don’t let things get to you. We’ve talked about mostly good stuff, but there’s stuff that I have to deal with every year that’s not too pleasant. We’re dealing with almost 3,000 kids, and 6,000 parents, and we’ve got divorces, restraining orders, one parent on the other, child protection issues come up.

LD: What’s your favorite thing about AYSO?

JM: What everybody says on the board is, “If I got paid I’d quit. You couldn’t pay me enough to ref this game with some of these parents. It’s a good thing I do it for free.” The board members get a really rough time at time. We’ve had these new coaches get hit with some of these parents who are just high maintenance…

For every little bad thing there’s like 20 good things. There’s so much. When you watch these kids just having a blast and get so excited at the end of the game is the best.

Name: John Maloney

Born: New London, Connecticut

Family: Wife Valerie and daughters Meghan, 17, and Carleigh, 14.

Civic Involvement: AYSO Commissioner; Sunday School Teacher at Holy Cross Church; runs the Society of Professional Engineers’ Math Counts Program for Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties

Professional Accomplishments: Electrical Engineer, owner of JMPE Electrical Engineering and Lighting Design with offices in Santa Barbara and Bakersfield.

Little-Known Fact: John’s first job after college was as a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey clown.

Originally published in Noozhawk

Little League, big laughs

Posted on by
Reply
© Artproem | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

© Artproem | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

My son finally graduated from T-Ball to Mini Minors Little League this season and I haven’t stopped laughing. As a mom, I don’t have a whole lot of ego invested in my son’s sports career. Most dads are another story.

My experience with dads who volunteer to coach is that they fall into a few major types: the “Super Dad,” who wants the kids to learn a little bit and have fun; the “Winning is the Only Thing Dad,” who feels he’s a failure if he doesn’t make everyone cry at least once; the “I Coulda Been a Contender Dad,” who plants all of his unrealized athletic ambitions onto his kid, and never takes him out of the game; “The Clueless Wonder Dad,” who thinks that he knows all about a sport despite all evidence to the contrary; and the “Dad on the Prowl,” who only picks the kids with the best-looking moms. My husband would never volunteer to coach, but if he did he would definitely fall into this last category, and wouldn’t even pick our own kid for his team.

Despite our child’s lackluster tryout performance, somehow we managed to get a “Super Dad” coach who lives and breathes baseball. Excellent. Maybe Koss–who has never actually seen an entire baseball game–can be the first one in our family to actually take to baseball. He certainly has the long, slow, sluggish pace of the sport down, especially when it’s time to go to school in the morning.

At our first practice we got the list of equipment. Pants, shirt, hat–check. Belt, socks, spittable snacks–check. Mitt, cleats, cup–check. Huh? Cup? A Dixie Cup or a Big Gulp?

When I bought it I felt like a teenage boy buying condoms–on my way toward the checkout stand I grabbed some freeze dried camping food and golf tees, just so that the Champro Youth Athletic Cup wouldn’t look so lonely in my basket.

Speaking of baskets, my next challenge was how to put the darn thing on. Did it go inside or outside of the underwear? Was it really supposed to be made of plastic? My husband was absolutely useless in this regard–apparently the Water Polo team didn’t wear cups either.

Koss tried it on.

“What if I have to go wee wee?” he asked. Wee wee? What kind of sissy expression is that? I may not have any brothers but I know enough to know that wee wee is for T-Ball players, baseball players have to take a piss.

“If you’re going to teach to say, ‘take a piss,'” argued my husband, “you should really go for it. Take a wicked rhinoceros piss.”

Koss ended up hating the cup and not wearing it. Apparently, none of the kids did. I heard that one of the boys wouldn’t wear it because it “made him look too big down there.” All of the dads laughed when they heard this–and none of the boys could ever find their cups again.

Cupless, we were ready for first game–except nobody told us they were 12 hours long. We spent five of those hours trying to decipher a sign that said, “Alcoholic Beverages or Softball Playing.” We were very close to choosing alcoholic beverages when someone pointed out the “No” that had faded from the top of the sign.

The 17th inning started off extra slowly–apparently because they were dressing my child in a Star Wars Stormtrooper outfit so he could play catcher. I guess a full body cup is better than nothing.

“What’s he doing?” I asked my husband, Zak, as the other parents started to giggle. Apparently when the coach told him to “get down behind home plate,” Koss took him literally and did just that. I was laughing too hard to yell to him to stand up. He played the entire inning on his knees, even chasing after balls. Does Knee-Ball come after T-Ball?

We really should take that kid to a Dodger game or something.

It was finally his turn to be up at bat. At the coach’s urging, he took a practice swing that actually looked pretty good. Then all of the sudden he started to do a little dance I recognized. “What’s he doing?” asked one of the moms. Oh dear. Koss dropped the bat and yelled to his coach, “I have to pee,” and ran to find the bathroom.

It brought down the house. Talk about comedic timing. It was my proudest sports moment to date.

“At least he could have said ‘like a rhinoceros,'” said his father, the “Coulda Been a Contender” comedian.

Originally appeared in the Santa Barbara Daily Sound

FitFest aims to raise energy level

Posted on by
Reply
Photo courtesy maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com.

Photo courtesy maxpixel.freegreatpicture.com.

There’s something about physical activity that breaks you out of hamster wheel-like-thinking and makes your mind feel refreshed. It also alleviates stress, improves self-esteem and reduces the odds against developing all kinds of serious illnesses.

For women and girls in particular, “physical inactivity and poor diet together have become the second leading cause of preventable death after smoking in the U.S.,” said Lisa Braithwaite, executive director of Body Electric, which will hold its annual Women’s FitFest 2005 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 26 at Earl Warren Showgrounds.

Braithwaite said she wasn’t an athlete growing up, but in her junior year at Cate School she was required to play sports.

“I learned how to play basketball and I learned how to throw the discus and the shot put. It was totally great,” she said.

Years later, while working at Shelter Services for Women and Girls Inc., Braithwaite got caught up watching the women’s NCAA basketball tournament on TV.

“I just was blown away by just the level of athleticism that women had come to. I had no idea. … I sort of had this epiphany, I was already working in domestic violence and spent all of my time talking to teenage girls about healthy relationships and body image issues and what our society tells girls they should be … I had never really made the connection with sports,” she said.

She had the epiphany in 1997 and went on to found Body Electric –with co-founder Brenda Britsch and their friends, Kira Anthofer, Ginny Benson, Jana Johnston and Kim Reese — based on the common goal of educating Santa Barbara girls and women about the benefits of physical fitness. “(Physical activity) makes you feel good,” said Braithwaite, whose group also advocates for gender equity in addition for providing opportunities for physical challenge.

“We’re here to encourage women and girls to adopt physical activity in ways that work for them, and to help break down the barriers that keep many of us from achieving our goals,” she said.

Time — including commitments to work and children — money, and body image are the barriers that keep most women from working up a healthy sweat.

But Body Electric is helping to change that attitude by building awareness of just how much fun sports can be at its free annual sports/health/fitness fair, which will feature sports clinics and demonstrations, exhibits from local businesses and nonprofit organizations, a scavenger hunt and a raffle.

Activities and demonstrations will include a climbing wall, body fat analysis, dancing, martial arts, belly dancing and gymnastics, with interactive exhibits from Mark French basketball summer camps, Real Living Nutrition Services, Santa Barbara Outrigger Canoe Club, Titan Sports Performance, One Legacy, and other health, sport and fitness organizations.

For more information about the Women’s FitFest and other fitness activities, www.bodyelectric-sb.org.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on February 17, 2005.

Bridging the divide on the fields of play

Posted on by
Reply
Youth soccer in small town USA. Photo shot by Derek Jensen (Tysto), 2005-September-17, courtesy Wikipedia Commons.

Youth soccer in small town USA.
Photo shot by Derek Jensen (Tysto), 2005-September-17, courtesy Wikipedia Commons.

When you get right down to the divots, polo and soccer have a lot of similarities.

I recently had a weekend that truly exemplified what life is like in Santa Barbara: I spent Saturday on the soccer field and Sunday on the polo field.

At first glance, these two fields seemed to have nothing in common beyond their sneeze-inducing allergens that battle hopelessly with my Claratin prescription (now available over the counter). However, as a trained UCLA sociology major, I am qualified to speculate on sociocultural connections where they exist and to invent them where they don’t.

Both sports involve opportunities for off-roading — you get to park on a beautifully manicured lawn at the polo fields and what could easily be a BMX course at the UCSB soccer fields.

High-density housing tastefully abuts the mountains overlooking the polo fields, while graduate student housing will soon replace the soccer fields, if the university’s plans are ever approved.

Also, there were members of the Firestone family at both venues, which certainly bodes well for the next Board of Supervisors. If Brooks and his offspring can bridge the gap between soccer and polo, surely there’s hope for the battle between north and south Santa Barbara County.

Both sports involve opportunities for mayhem — men charging on horses trying to hit a ball at a goal, and 5-year-old boys and girls running full out trying to kick anything they can, including their teammates.

Both sports apparently also involve cartwheels; although at soccer they take place on the field and at polo they were strictly on the sidelines. Polo is more kid-friendly than you’d think. My son and his buddy ran up and down the grandstand between chukkers, while little girls exhibited spontaneous bursts of gymnastic skill.

Little boys are likely to burst into spontaneous bouts of wrestling and possibly even multiple rounds of jokes, but I have yet to see my son or his teammates do even one cartwheel on the field when the game is going on.

The boys also could care less what color their uniforms are, let alone whether their hair’s brushed, while one adorably pink-clad girls team (the Rainbow Princess Sparkle Dolphins or something) had matching French braids, which were great for keeping their hair out of their faces during cartwheels.

A visit to the soccer field offers opportunities to say hi to everyone you’ve ever met in Santa Barbara, without the conversational expectations of a cocktail party. If Marty Blum and Lois Capps were smart, they’d hold their office hours during AYSO games and get a tan at the same time.

The polo match was more about people watching than people talking. If you’ve ever lusted after a straight-out-of “My Fair Lady” hat at Nordstrom’s and decided you had nowhere to wear it, attending a polo match gives you the perfect excuse. It’s also a great place to bring out that wedding gift picnic basket you thought only people in Town and Country Magazine ever used.

At the soccer field I looked anything but fashionable trying to juggle enormous folding chairs, soccer balls, juice boxes and a small, rowdy boy.

Did I mention that my sociology training qualifies me to speculate on sociocultural connections that may or may not exist?

While snack time is one of the highlights of the soccer game for both boys and girls, the polo matches put on a halftime show that’s a big favorite with bigger boys and girls — the stomping of the divots. Similar to the stomping of the grapes, spectators are invited onto the field to stomp on the grass on their way to a complimentary glass of champagne.

No wonder they call polo the “sport of kings.” Anything that involves sunshine, mountain views and cocktails is OK by me. I hope our soccer team understands that when it’s my turn to bring snacks.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on September 30, 2004.

Polo club hosts president’s cup this weekend

Posted on by
Reply
Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club, courtesy photo.

Santa Barbara Polo and Racquet Club, courtesy photo.

There’s still time to check out the “sport of kings” at the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club. Continuing its 94th season, this Sunday is the United States Polo Association President’s Cup. The Wickenden Cup, held in honor of Ernest Wickenden, the very first local “star” polo player, will be on Oct. 10 and Oct. 17. All games take place at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. at the 3300 Via Real in Carpinteria. General admission is $10 and kids under 12 are always admitted free.

Fans are also encouraged to come out on Saturdays for the next three weekends to see the teams in competition between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Although the announcer isn’t there to give viewers a blow-by-blow account, it’s still an exhilarating sport to watch.

Polo is one of the oldest sports in the world, with its beginnings in either China or Persia nearly 6,000 years ago. Each team is made up of four players, who each have six horses for just one game, so they have a fresh horse for each seven-minute “chukker.”

While watching the horses perform is exciting, the highlight for many is the Sunday half-time “Champagne Divot Stomp” where patrons are welcomed onto the field for a complimentary glass of champagne, or sparkling cider, while helping to push the divots from the horses hooves back in place on the field.

Originally published in South Coast Beacon on September 30, 2004.