FROM WWW.MYBAKERSFIELDSPORTS.COM he Bay Area Boys Club helped kids such as Richard Ross and Chris Livingston stay off the streets and on the basket- ball courts when they were young — now these men are giving back to the community. Ross created and founded Agape Youth Basketball (AYB), a non- profit 501c organization, in 2005 in order to provide skill and develop- ment training for Bakersfield-area kids. Livingston came aboard a short time later. The organization places an emphasis on the student-ath- lete, building character, accounta- bility and discipline in getting these players to the next level of competition. “We want them to develop and grow and become better players and better people,” Livingston said. “We do that through basket- ball instruction and by finding the best tournaments we can for our teams and by getting them to com- pete hard, but the other stuff has to go along with it too. “Sportsmanship and developing strong character qualities is very important.” There are currently 65 boys and girls in the program, ranging from ages 10 to 15, and playing on five teams: two 14 and under boys teams, a 15U boys team, a 12 U boys team and a 14U girls team. Most teams play from March through August. Playing particularly well this sea- son is the AYB girls 14U team. Under the guidance of coach Bruce Godfrey, the Lady Warriors have won nine of 13 games head- ing into the Porterville Blaze Spring Showdown at Harmony Magnet Academy. A Lady Warriors Car Wash Fundraiser was also held — with proceeds going toward the Stan- ford University Tara Hoops Basket- ball Camp trip scheduled for June 22-25. Other camps include the L.A. Sparks Pre-Game Advantage Bas- ketball Mini-Camp July 3 and the UCLA Girls Basketball Camps July 29-Aug. 1. Earlier this season, the girls 14U team competed in the Porterville Blaze Shoot Out March 20 at Har- mony Magnet Academy, the Yosemite Spring Fling-Oakhurst at Yosemite High School, the 13th annual Ventura Seaside Tourna- ment at Ventura High School, the Top Gun-Hanford Elite at Lemore High School, and the One Day Shootout at Blair High School. One of the boys 14U teams recently won the HAX Focus Bas- ketball Tournament under the guidance of coach Robert Rodriguez, and earlier, they cap- tured the title of the Arvin Christ- mas Tournament. They also competed in the Acad- emic Basketball Association’s 10th Annual Bring It On Classic on May 15-16 at Cal State University, Dominguez Hills in Carson. “One of the things we really stress with the kids is the need to get an education,” Livingston said. “We’ve had kids who weren’t even going to their classes when they came to us, and we’ve helped turn their behavior around.” Coaches, who volunteer their time to AYB also include Keith Blank, Greg McCall, Ed Parra, Ed Clarke and Rodriguez. Those interested in learning more about AYB may visit: www.aybbasketball.org. T 2 The Bakersfield Voice Sunday, May 30, 2010 Share stories, photos, blogs www. bakersfieldvoice .com ■ Submitting your sto- ries for The Bakersfield Voice is simple and FREE! Just go to: www.bakers- fieldvoice.com and create a profile. ■ Choose what you’d like to contribute (an article, letter, picture or community event listing) and post it yourself. ■ For delivery issues, please email: voicedelivery@bakersfield.com ■ Still need help getting your contributions onto our Web site? E-mail Sandra Molen at smolen@bakersfield.com YOUR SPORTS don’t want to offend anyone about performing endurance exercise — it burns a ton of calories while your doing it and contributes to a longer, healthier life, no question — but I have to tell you, it’s overrated as a tool for fat loss. Doing 28,000 repetitions on the treadmill just isn’t the most joint friendly way to a better body either — resistance training is. Endurance is only an option for fat loss, not a necessity, because the two most pow- erful drivers of fat loss are diet and anaero- bic exercise. What is anaerobic exercise? For simplici- ty’s sake, it’s lifting heavy things, running fast, jumping, climbing, pushing, pulling, fighting — all the things that were vital to the survival of our species. Being able to jog for an hour at a specified percentage of your maximum heart wasn’t ... er ... unless there was a super sale going on someplace and the only way you could get there was via foot! According to Dr. Kenneth Cooper, steady- pace exercise was the key to everything. In case you’re too young to remember, Dr. Kenneth Cooper was a former college track athlete who coined the phrase “aerobics” — and we all know how popular that term has been for about four decades. I do — I taught those classes for 20 years! The main problem with repetitive motion is that your body will make adaptations to become very efficient at the exercise you’re doing, but efficiency means you actually use fewer calories to perform it. Without getting too scientific, I want to clear a few things up. If you compare the number of calories being burned during endurance training, then endurance wins hands down. But what you may not know is that strength training (your anaerobic path- way energy system used for short, explo- sive movements) will produce an after burn that endurance exer- cise cannot. Your body continues to burn fat calories after the work out is over. But calories are not the only considera- tion. Serious strength training also signals your body to burn a HIGHER percentage of fat calories for many hours after you leave the gym. Fat oxidation occurs — what this means is that your body uses oxygen to turn fat into energy, just as it does when you’re doing aerobic exercise! Wanna burn more calories while you sleep? Well, strength training has also been known to increase your resting metabolic rate. Seems like more bang for your buck to me. Also, did you know the body has to work harder to repair and rebuild the muscles you tore down in the gym? That takes ener- gy. Energy IS calories. Now, let’s add rebuilding the connective tissue and the bones. And, since the mus- cle you’re adding is metabolically active tis- sue, whew, that total amount of calories being burned is steadily climbing. See where I am going with all of this? To be fair, aerobic exercise is a good fat loss tool. It’s just not the best. Combine a tough workout lifting weights, using large muscle groups and the caloric expenditure climbs. Besides, who wants to put hours upon hours in on the treadmill? I don’t! Not into lifting weights? Well, OK, try this. Do two minutes of endurance exercise on your bike, followed by all-out, one-to-two minute bouts of hard cardio. This at least mimics strength training in the form of anaerobic capacity. Shake up your workout — it will push that metabolism to another level. Lift weights, preferably free weights, which use more muscle fiber that machines do. Work as hard as your able to. If your ultimate goal is fat loss, then this is the path to choose. It will also add to your balance, strengthen your core and make your muscles shapely. Perform some metabolic mix up and what the body does afterward when it tries to recover will produce a fat-burning machine. Please consult a doctor before beginning any exercise program. Questions, comments? Please email Gina, Body by Gina at [email protected]. Source — Lou Schuler author of “The New Rules Of Lifting For Women.” YOUR FITNESS YOUR VOICE I Petroleum wives doing their part to help finance local MS programs COURTESY PHOTO AYB girls under 14 basketball team. Basketball program keeps kids on the courts, rather than the streets Want more bang for your buck? Mix up your fitness routine! BY CHRISTINE GRONTKOWSKI Community contributor n the heels of World MS Day, the Association of Petroleum Wives (APW) is doing its part to bring us one step closer toward a world free of multiple sclerosis (MS). The Bakersfield nonprofit organ- ization for women with husbands in (or retired from) the petroleum industry presented the Kern Coun- ty office of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society a check for $13,000 at a luncheon on May 25, one day before World MS Day. The APW raised the funds over a matter of months during its signa- ture events. The two biggest events were the Charity Sporting Clay Shoot held in April at the Kern County Gun Club and the Charity Bunco Night held during MS Awareness Week on March 11 at the Petroleum Club. Every year, the APW chooses nonprofit organizations to benefit from its fundraisers; APW member Lynn Califf said, “I think this year was our best year ever.” The money that will be donated to the National MS Society will be used to help fund local programs and services for those people affected by MS. The check was presented to Community Development Manag- er Fotini Alfieris and Special Events/Program staff member Christine Grontkowski at the Guild House in Bakersfield. The check presentation came just one day before World MS Day, which was celebrated May 26. The National MS Society is encouraging everyone to get involved in the global movement to help the 2.1 million people who have been diagnosed worldwide. You can register at: www.worldmsday.org, or if you would like to make a donation, text “MSAWARE” to 20222, and $5 will go to the National MS Society. About Multiple Sclerosis Multiple sclerosis interrupts the flow of information between the brain and the body and it stops people from moving. Every hour in the United States, someone is newly diagnosed with MS, an unpredictable, often dis- abling disease of the central nerv- ous system. Symptoms range from numb- ness and tingling to blindness and paralysis. The progress, severity and specific symptoms of MS in any one person cannot yet be pre- dicted, but advances in research and treatment are moving us closer to a world free of MS. Most people with MS are diag- nosed between the ages of 20 and 50, with more than twice as many women as men being diagnosed with the disease. MS affects more than 400,000 people in the U.S., and 2.1 million worldwide. About the National Multiple Sclerosis Society MS stops people from moving. The National MS Society exists to make sure it doesn’t. We help each person address the challenges of living with MS. In 2009 alone, through our home office and 50-state network of chapters, we devoted over $132 million to programs that enhanced more than one million lives. To move us closer to a world free of MS, the Society also invested nearly $36 million to support 375 research projects around the world. We are people who want to do something about MS NOW. To learn more about MS and the work of the National MS Society, visit: www.nationalMSsociety.org. BY KATHY MILLER Community contributor he campus community at California State University, Bakersfield, has been watching as a dragon is born in the sculpture patio of the art department. Internationally known Korean artist Byoung-Tak Mun is creating a dragon tail as the final installment of his Nine Dragons series of sculp- tures, which inhabit different coun- tries around the world. When completed, the dragon tail will spiral more than 20 feet into the air. Made of rebar and branches, the sculpture will give the perception a dragon is buried with only its tail showing. “Dragons are very important in Korea and they symbolize nature and often the wrath of nature,” said Joyce Kohl, interim director of the art department at CSUB, as she introduced the artist to a group of students on May 18. “Now visualize nine dragons around the world, furious about what man is doing to the earth, and burying their heads into the earth.” Mun has been working on the project for 14 years. The other dragon tails are in Aus- tralia, Belgium, Italy, France, Ger- many, and Korea. This will be the only one in the United States. The sculptor knows just enough English to describe the materials he uses: iron, reeds, branches and vol- canic rock. Each tail differs slightly in material, but all take a simi- lar spiral shape. When one stu- dent asked Mun why he chose Bak- ersfield for his final installment, he looked at Kohl, who said, “I think we chose him.” Mun has worked on international sculpture symposiums with two other artists whose works grace the grounds of CSUB. Those artists had been invited to campus in the past as part of the art department’s annual Visiting Sculptor program. Paid by a Pelletier grant, the visit- ing artists are chosen from a pool of applicants voted on by students and finally chosen by a campus committee. This year, Mun made the cut. It is Mun’s first visit to the United States. He is staying in the dorms on campus for two weeks working daily on the sculpture. The public is invited to watch the process, as well as donate branches for the project. Kohl is still negotiating with cam- pus officials on the location for installing the tail when it is fin- ished. Kohl and Mun say they hope the location is peaceful and can be seen from a wide vantage point. Many of the other dragon tails are in natural settings — in woods, on grassy slopes, and near bodies of water. While the CSUB campus is a more urban setting, it does offer several natural expanses as possi- bilities. For more information about the Visiting Sculptor program, to view the work in progress or to donate branches, please call Joyce Kohl, Interim Art Department Director, at 655-3095. T Visiting Korean artist creates a dragon tail from the ground up at Cal State Bakersfield YOUR ARTS GINA ROLOW Fitness columnist COURTESY PHOTO Christine Grontkowski, Lynn Califf and Kim Kotrla at the Association of Petroleum Wives Charity Bunco Night. The association recently present- ed the National Multiple Sclerosis Society with a check for $13,000. ISTOCKPHOTO PHOTO COURTESY PHOTO Byoung-Tak Mun’s dragon tail sculpture located in Australia. O Mun