Sports

Two championship games for the Independent Order of Odd Fellows San Lorenzo Valley Men's division Softball League were played last Wednesday at the Highlands Park in Ben Lomond.In division B, two underdogs – third at the regular season's end, the Sharks met the fourth place Mountain Mechanics, who held a seemingly comfortable lead through the championship game's first 6 1/2 innings, and went into the bottom of the seventh with a five points lead. But then the Sharks, known for the last inning rallies, loaded bases twice and, with fewconsecutive single runs, started chipping away at the Mountain Mechanics lead. With two out and some outstanding last ditch defense, though, the latter prevailed, 15 - 14, and claimed the championship.Chris Amos was a winning pitcher, Sharks' Robert Smith the losing one.In the division’s A game, Mud Dogs beat the Flingers 12 - 9.

As the school year approaches, San Lorenzo Valley High School’s water polo teams are being whipped into shape. This abrupt end to the tranquility of summer comes in the form of Hell Week, five days of intense practices to prepare for the upcoming season.

In the Independent Order of Odd Fellows' San Lorenzo Valley Softball Men's Summer League two semi-final games, played last Wednesday at Highlands Park, there were two, contrasting patterns.In the first game, Mountain Mechanics jumped to an early lead and were never threatened, as they hammered the Nailers, 20-6. During the regular season, a 10-point lead would kick-in a mercy rule and the game would be over, but in the playoffs the teams must play 7 full innings (unless there are extra innings).In the evening game, between the Sharks and the Woodpeckers, the game was close until the last inning. Tied at 20-20, the Sharks scored a run at the bottom of the 7th inning, and so they will meet the Mountain Mechanics in the championship game next Wednesday, August 12, at 6 p.m. at Highlands Park.The August 12 game has a “Shakespearean-like” family’s conflict side to it. There will be a first-ever grandfather/grandson duo on the Mountain Mechanics team. Chris Currier and his grandson, Ben Knudson, will be pitched against a “Father with Three Sons” (Mark Mullins with his sons Billy, Robert and John, all former jocks at SLVHS) on the Sharks team.

Thousands crowded the street from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk’s Cocoanut Grove to the Santa Cruz Wharf.This year’s annual Wharf to Wharf race took place on July 26th. The six-mile race that was run from the Santa Cruz Wharf to the finish at Capitola’s Wharf Road began at 8:30 a.m.Other racers were there to do their best while enjoying a fun atmosphere. Many wore costumes or carried flags, like San Lorenzo Valley High School graduate Kaila Gibson who raced with the elites and was decked out in Superman running gear.Organized by expected finish time into corrals of runners, the competitors chatted, prepared, and warmed up with the help of upbeat music and warm-up dancers.It was 43 years ago when Santa Cruz’s Wharf to Wharf was only able to claim 273 runners. “I was here at the very first one in 1973,” said Ken Thomas, President of the race’s Board of Directors, “Today we’ve registered 16,000 runners.”This year’s race was especially important to the race’s future. “We are evaluating start and finish lines to see if we can add more people or if it’s going to stay the same,” said Race Director Scott McConville.“The elite athletes are really fast this year,” said McConville, “The depths of the men’s field is probably it’s strongest in the past ten years.”Elite level competitors come from around the globe to compete in Santa Cruz’s Wharf to Wharf, and many are hosted by local families. “The country that’s had representatives with the most success has been Kenya,” according to Thomas.One of these international runners, Shadrack Kosgei, hails from Kenya. This year’s race was not Kosgei’s first run in Santa Cruz, “I’ve won three times, second two times it’s going to be my sixth time [racing],” Kosgei said while warming up in front of the Boardwalk Bowl.Kosgei came in second behind Sam Chelanga, just missing what would have been his record-winning fourth win.Kosgei, Chelanga, and Risper Gesabwa, the women’s winner, all come from Kenya.Local volunteers play a huge part in making this race happen. Many of them come from the county’s high school sports teams. In the spirit of giving back, some of the proceeds from the race are given to help fund our local high school’s sports programs including San Lorenzo Valley Middle School, Scotts Valley’s Middle School and many other schools.The race also sponsors two scholarship funds. Two students are awarded scholarships annually from each fund; one fund is for two-years and the other for four years. Scholarships are awarded to high school scholar-athletes. Two recent recipients are San Lorenzo Valley’s Claire McMillan in 2014 and Scotts Valley’s Vanessa Fraser in 2013.Whether running for gold or to have a good time, the festive atmosphere of the race brings runners back year after year.

Every year in mid-July a group of over 30 teenagers make their annual pilgrimage to Mammoth Lakes, California for the Fall Creek Running Club’s high altitude training camp. From s’mores around the campfire to movie nights and hot springs, these kids enjoy the best that nature can offer while training for their upcoming cross country and track season.This year’s camp was held at the Shady Rest Campground from July 18 to 24 and hosted 34 teens and 12 parents.“I’d have to say getting to experience different trails and new places to train was really cool,” says first year camper Sophia Zachau, “Being able to do other things like going to the hot springs and June Lake while we were there was also nice; that way we were able to take a break from training constantly.”Brendan Fitzgerald, another camper, described his experience by saying, “Mammoth is a beautiful place with sun and flat land, a great town, lakes, hot springs, and many more things to do.”Rob Collins, coach of the Fall Creek Running Club and SLV track team, has been going on the trip since 1999. “A lot of the parents actually run it, I just show up and enjoy myself,” says Collins.The Fall Creek Track Club is not the only training group to have fallen in love with this location and all it has to offer. The Mammoth Lakes area is also the favorite training grounds of many of the nation’s top Olympic marathoners like Meb Keflezighi and Shalane Flanagan, and as many as two dozen other high school and college teams from across California.SLV alumni Anna Maxwell, one of the many returning runners, said “From dealing with the bears every night, to ghost stories and jokes around the campfire, to listening to the stories from battered and hairy Pacific Crest Trail hikers in the local volcanic hot springs; it’s all part of the experience. It’s a great place to get quality summer training in, but it is also a place that brings kids together and helps foster the team mentality that has lead the legacy of successful runners Coach Collins has produced.“Some of the campers are not even runners. Collins says, “We’ve had other kids from other sports — you don’t have to be a distance runner to do this; it’s just kind of a camping trip.”More information about the Fall Creek Running Club can be found at www.fallcreekrunningclub.org.

Bullseye Archery, the newest archery shop in Scotts Valley, is the perfect place for hunters and beginning archers to stock up on gear and knowledge of the bowman’s art. Larry Spittler and Jeanne Burke are the owners of the shop located at 5299 Scotts Valley Drive, which opened on March 1, 2015. “We do tuning of bows, cam bows, and regular bows, and we sell any kind of bow that you could possibly want,” Spittler said, “plus the stuff to go with it.” Spittler, an archer of 40 years, said that he started practicing archery in the sixth grade after witnessing Howard Hill’s archery expedition at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco in 1964. “I did (archery) in college and 40 years later I’m going ‘I think I’d like to shoot a bow again,’ a lot of people do the same thing,” Burke said. “They come in here and they haven’t shot in years.” Bullseye has a beautiful display of bows ranging from English longbows, Australian Aborigine bows, recurve bows, and compound bows — originally called cam bows — with a small selection of crossbows as well. “The thing is don’t be afraid to try something new, if you have never tried it before,” Burke said. “Because we are very helpful, we can tell you and offer you anything.” For those interested in getting started in archery, the two main bows for beginners are the recurve bow — which is curved at the tips — and compound bows. “(Recurve bows) used to be the fastest bow 30 year ago, (and) then some engineer got the wise idea of putting pulleys and cams on the end of bows,” Spittler said. Compound bows can shoot longer distances than the recurve bow, and they usually have lighter draw weight. However, the recurve bow is more traditional and much less expensive, giving the bow wielder a sense of the device’s history and beauty. “If you are going to get started with a recurve with really good equipment then you’re looking at about $300,” Spittler explained, “in your cam bows you’re probably looking at $700.” Recurve bows are for fun, he said, while the compound bow is all about hitting the target. The shop stocks bow parts, knives, and throwing axes. It also sells a variety of targets, which are very popular items. “That’s one of the reasons why (archery is) so successful here, so many people have room to have a range in their back yard,” said Bullseye’s Store Manager Gabrielle Garrett, a regular archer since 2008. With the start of deer hunting season, the shop has recently stocked up on broad heads and other points and blunts for hunting. Bow hunters typically shoot with compound bows, but some use long bows and recurve bows as well, Garrett said. Their equipment goes fast and they have bows on consignment and old arrows that have been repaired for $2 each. “Some people would rather do that — especially for their kids who loose them and break them all the time — than pay for new arrows so we sell a lot of those and we are constantly repairing arrows and making new sets,” she said. Currently, the shop does not have an archery range or classes. “Most of the time, I tell people to go to Archery Santa Cruz because they have an indoor range and walk in instruction — or to go to the Santa Cruz Archery’s Club, but then you have to have your own equipment and they only teach classes once a month,” Garrett said. Spittler said that they would eventually like to have a shop with a range, but in the mean time he directs most people to the range at De Laviega Park, which is open to the public on Saturday and Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. Bullseye Archery’s well-organized shop is open from 3 to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday. Those in need of equipment or archery advice are encouraged to stop by.

By the year of 1984, almost two-thirds of the National Football League’s teams played on artificial turf.The growing concern for increased injuries, player’s preference of the natural grass fields, and an easiness of lawn-growing — due to the progress of gardening science — has caused the numbers of teams playing on artificial turf to dwindle to just about one-third of the teams last year.FIFA — the world's soccer governing body — outlawed artificial turf altogether in men’s soccer. The Women’s World cup, which recently finished in Canada, was played solely on artificial turf, and broadcasters for one of the games mentioned that while the air temperature was almost 100 degrees, the turf's was above 160.There are strict precautions: NFL mandates testing fields before every game – primarily to detect if a playing surface is too hard and poses an increased concussion risk for players. It's called Gmax level — the amount of force between the weight of human head and the field at impact. It has to be way below 200 because at that level the human skull can fracture.College football is much less into these tests, and fields for youth sports hardly ever get tested.San Lorenzo Valley High School has a dual level of concussion prevention; underneath the artificial grass is a layer of Brock-brand sheets of shock absorbing pads, on top of that are thousands of pounds of pulverized rubber from old tires.The rubber has to be replenished regularly — and the SLV district has the supplies and equipment to do that — because when crumbed rubber levels get depleted from their original depth, it results in a dangerously hard playing surface, with some Gmax readings above 250.And there are possible carcinogens in the pulverized rubber, which only recently started getting attention and testing.But there's more than that. Originally praised as completely maintenance-free, the fields also need to be sanitized and cleaned regularly due to the blood, sweat, saliva, cleats, screws, and other debris, all to be taken care of by the field-grooming crews. Hardly maintenance-free.In light of this, recent drive to convert the Scotts Valley High School football field into artificial turf should perhaps require a pause. The running track's fine and dandy, but keeping grass on the field, with modern gardening techniques, might be a wiser choice, unless one believes in maintenance-free Astroturf (at the expense of athletes' health). For those believers — there’s a bridge for sale in New York.On the bright side, the resurfacing of the running track at San Lorenzo Valley HS was finished last week. It looks better than new and will cost the district just $100,000, matched by the same amount from the annual Wharf-to-Wharf run’s fund-raising profits.“When the new school year starts, we’ll train the athletic departments for the best way to use it,” said Erik Slaughter, Director of the SLVUSD maintenance department.The resurfacing was done by Beynon Sports Surfaces Company and should last for another ten years.“It’s a faster track, due to a different material used for resurfacing it. Our athletes love it,” said Rob Collins, SLVHS track and field head coach. “The jumps area behind the football field's end-zones that used to be concrete, was replaced with the astroturf and jumpers love that, too. Plus, there are brand new track markings for relays, 1-mile, 1600-meters, 3200-meters and more. It's a really great improvement.”

Pro Scuba Dive Center in Scotts Valley offers classes, rentals, equipment, and dive trips for those interested in exploring the ocean’s depts.

Some might consider activities involving horses as being only for those with strong arms and legs. After all, these animals are large and the movies suggest that a John Wayne or Clint Eastwood type is required to control them. However, these movies don’t show the really special attributes of a horse that may be unknown too many: horses are ideal for providing equine therapy for people with a variety of special needs.