This week we did a Q&A with Frank Maldonado. Here is more what he had to say during his interview that didn’t make the published version in the Desert Dispatch on July 1.

Q: Talk about the difference between winning your first championship game and your second championship game.
A: When we won the first national title, it was like you are in heaven. It’s the greatest experience in the world when you look back at everything you did to get there. When we won the second one, it was the same type of enjoyment. You get greedy, it’s just that feeling that is so amazing. We don’t like to talk about it to our players, and we don’t want to put that kind of pressure on them.
Sometimes, we joke when we look at Bill Russell on the cover of Sports Illustrated. We will hold our hands out because we want to win 11 rings.

Q: Was it weird to not win the championship game this year after winning back-to-back titles?
A: It was a sad feeling. The disappointment was for our players, especially for the new guys that came in and were all excited. The bottom line was, we were not the best team there this year.

Q: What are some of your favorite memories at BCC?
A: I coached for three years at BCC from 1998 to 2001. Developing the players and moving them up where they could be successful were some of my favorite memories.

Q: What is your favorite thing about being a battling coach?
A: I enjoy the challenge and every hitter is different. I am not going to talk about any one hitter because they all have different styles. Being the hitting instructor, I am able to work with each player, and help them develop their swing and other mental aspects. It’s a challenge, and it’s up to me to develop them to become impact players. We want to win championships. I like being able to develop that young green hitter and see the results after that.

-Jason Blasco, Staff Writer

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Last week we did a Q&A with Chuck Jefferson, shown in the picture on the right with Ronnie Paddack and Ernie Smith,  and here is more of what he had to say during our interview. Click here to see some highlights of Jefferson at the Olympic trails. 

Q: Can you describe what it was like after you won the eight-man tournament bracket, knowing that you only had one man left to beat?

A: When I got the win, there was an immediate surge of emotion and you pump your fist. I knew I had to beat Ryan Reser two more times, and that made my celebration short lived. As soon as I got off the mat, I looked at my coach and said, “We have to do this two times. It’s a difficult position to be in to continue to fight with that energy.” It was a good 45-minutes to an hour before we fought, and trying to maintain that energy level and my composure and still be motivated was not easy.

Q: How did you feel at the conclusion of the tournament?

A: I just felt terrible knowing I walked out of my last match. I felt empty. Yeah, I had a pretty good day if you only watch the first three fights. The last two were the most important fights of my career and those were the ones I lost.

Q: What do you consider your biggest achievement in your Judo run?

A: I think my most memorable moment would be the first time I won the Pan Am Games in 2002. Leading up to it, half way through the year, I wouldn’t have been picked to make the team. It ended up I beat out Ryan Reser to make the Pan American games. I was behind him in points, but I passed by him at the U.S. Open and made the Pan American team. I don’t think people expected me to go out there and win because I was facing the number one Brazilian. It was a great feeling, winning a tourney that no expects you to win.

Q: Talk about your career at San Jose State. Is that where you want to remain?

A: My home is here now, and that is my home club. We have a lot of international students. It’s a great Dojo and I love being there.

Q: How much did it help you having the Dojo right up the street?

A: Just the fact that the Judo club was up the street helped when I was 5 years old, it happened to work out from day one.

-Jason Blasco, Staff Writer

Post from: Barstow Sports Blog

Like any good reporter, Paul Gutierrez had many, many stories to tell for our Q&A, and there was not nearly enough space in the newspaper to fit all of them.
Here’s a sampling of some of the stories:

• Paul talked about giving the readers behind the scenes information for extra impact. Well here’s the behind the scenes story behind our interview with Paul.
There were really two interviews with Paul. The first one went well but a recording malfunction (i.e. Matt screwed up) meant it didn’t get recorded. There were plenty of notes taken, but not enough to piece together an entire Q&A. Paul was gracious enough to agree to another interview and delivered even more interesting stories the second time around.

• Paul began talking with Sports Illustrated around the time he was graduating from UNLV in 1995. At one point during the hiring process the magazine called his parents home in Barstow. His mom answered the phone and very nearly hung up on them because she thought they were trying to sell her a subscription.
Guiterrez was taking post-undergrad classes at UNLV when he finally got the job. One of the classes was a television production course.

Q: Were you able to finish those classes?
A: It was funny. (Sports Illustrated) called and offered me the job on a Thursday, and the drop date was on a Friday. It was literally in the middle of the semester. I anchored the newscast that night because we had a weekly student-newcast in Vegas. During my signoff I said ‘This is my last newscast. I’m out of here. I got a job at SI.’ And then I dropped all my classes the next day and moved to New York a couple weeks later.”

Q: What was it like moving to New York?
A: It was a different world. It’s definitely the kind of place I appreciate more now then when I was living there. You are literally living on top of each other, there and you don’t see the stars. That’s the thing about Barstow that I missed — you go outside at night and you see the stars. In New York, not so much. You see building. There was a certain vibe and energy in New York that was really cool to be there at that time in my career. There’s no negatives; it was just a different atmosphere. It took literally about a year just to get used to being there.

• Paul once covered a Dodgers spring training game in Port St. Lucie, Fla., that turned into a Barstow reunion.
“I’m in the press box sitting next to John Olguin, who’s also a Barstow High School graduate and was working for the Dodgers PR department at that time, and down on the field is Dino Ebel,” Paul said. “It was three kids from Barstow in Port St. Lucie for spring training. All we were missing was Del Taco.”

• When asked about his favorite articles, Paul listed two different stories from opposite ends of his career.
He was working on a feature on Angels utility player Brian Downing while freelancing for the Desert Dispatch in 1990. Unbeknownst to him, Brian wasn’t speaking much to the Los Angeles media at the time.
“When I approached him after a game he was sitting at his locker, facing his locker, and when I came up, scared to death and asked, ‘Um, Mr. Downing, do you have a second?’ ” Paul wrote in an e-mail. “And he never looks up and says real low, ‘That depends; where you from?’ Shaking like a leaf, I gulp hard and say, ‘Barstow.’ And he turns, looks at me and his intensity is gone as he smiles and says, ‘Barstow? Well, I guess we’ve all got to start somewhere. Have a seat.’ ”

The other article came recently during his tenure with Sacramento Bee.

In “When baseball worlds collide”, Paul wrote about a subject he could relate to being an American-born Latino. He told the story of those players in Major League Baseball who cross both lines of heritage in a column.

Here’ s a snippet of the article:

“They are the ‘lost tribe’ of major-league baseball — the American-born Latino ballplayer. And — though they are as American as mom, apple pie, baseball and Taco Bell, and seemingly can walk with ease in both worlds to serve as a sort of bridge to the American way of life for their foreign-born brethren across that great cultural divide — they sometimes find they don’t fully fit in on either side.”

Thanks again to Paul for doing the interview twice! You can pick up his book he wrote with Dodgers legend Tommy Davis from Amazon.com.

— Matthew Peters, sports editor

Post from: Barstow Sports Blog

Zach Niusulu was a little wary of playing for a coach who never recruited him. Dirk Koetter was fired as the head football coach at Arizona State and replaced by Dennis Erickson in early 2007. Niusulu, a redshirt sophomore and Barstow native, had his fears eased once he got to talking with Erickson during spring practices. Erickson looked at his roster and noticed Niusulu was from Barstow and remembered one of his other players who once shared the 92311 zip code — T.J. Houshmandzadeh.

“He figured out T.J. was from Barstow, and that’s how we connected,” Zach said. “That was a nice little ice breaker with my head coach.”

Erickson coached T.J. and Bengals teammate Chad Johnson at Oregon State in 2000 when the Beavers finished ranked No. 4 in the AP Top 25 College Football Poll.

“He told me about T.J. I told him, I remember watching T.J. play growing up, but I never really knew who he was because he wasn’t that type of receiver in high school. That kind of helped out the process of me taking in the process of my coach getting fired.”

Look later in the week for more questions and answers from Zach.

Post from: Barstow Sports Blog

Q: What Foothill conference games are you looking forward to?
A: All conference games are important. We never overlook any conference opponent. The big four — you’ve got your Antelope Valley, your Mt. San Jacinto, Chaffey and your San Bernardino. You always know those four teams are going to come to play.

Q: What’s your coaching philosophy?
A: Primarily, I have a positive approach. I seek the positive and the good in what’s going on. It’s important and it’s necessary. That’s why I’ve got coach Woods and Johnson because they make up for where I lack. My whole positive, happy-go-lucky approach — they kind of help see the reality of the situation.

Q: Are there any coaches that you have learned from?
A: I was an assistant at the university of Utah. I worked under Elaine Elliott for three years. She was the best Xs and Os coach that I’ve ever been around. I learned a lot from her. I worked a lot of camps.I learned from my assistant coaches too. It’s not just big-name people that you learn from. I don’t have an over-weighing ego where I can’t expect input form other people. That’s a lot of my approach to the game.

Q: How did you get into coaching?
A: In college, I had a career-ending spinal cord injury. I couldn’t walk for like two years. My career-ending spinal cord injury in college led me into coaching. I just missed it so bad. You know who people go through losing a loved one? When I lost basketball as a player, there was just a total void there, and coaching made up for it. I’ve only spent one year away from it since I played in junior high.

Q: Is there anything that’s different now from when you played?
A: The game is just more athletic. The kids are more athletic. They are smarter. They are faster. When I played we had those 1980s shorts right to here. I was watching an old film the other day. The shorts were to here, and you had one or two great people on every team that could play, but that was back in the 80s. I played in the 80s. These guys are athletic. The position work — you know — big people can handle the ball and shoot 3s. Little people go post up. I mean, it is a different game.

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We recently conducted a Q&A session with Greg Feasel. Feasel is a former football player at Barstow High School and Barstow Community College. He eventually made his way into the pros, playing for the Green Bay Packers, San Diego Chargers and the Denver Gold in the United States Football League from 1983-1987. He joined the Colorardo Rockies in 1996 after serving as the division director of sales and marketing for Coca-Cola Enterprises and worked his way up. He currently preparing for the World Series with the Rockies.

When you are interviewing someone with a pretty cool job with a World Series team, it’s hard to stop asking questions. We found ourselves in that very predicament but didn’t let the extra material go to waste. Here’s a few things that didn’t make the printed Q&A.

Q: What do you think about the way the Rockies have grown as a team?
A: It’s been a great. The way to win in any sport is through building and continuity. It’s all about getting the people in the organization on the same page. The key is getting good players into our system. We know the young men on our team. When we first draft them they get to know our organization as they grow. It’s been a lot of hard work.

Q: Do you prefer football or baseball?
A: First and foremost I was a football player even though I played Little League. As a player I like football. It’s the sport my body was made for.

Q: How is attendance at games during the regular season?
A: In 1995 it was the first year of Coors Field and we sold out every game. In 1996 we were sold out. After that the honeymoon phase wore off. Usually we’re just north of 30,000 now. It’s good to see it full again. They don’t usually build 50,000 person baseball stadiums. Ideal is usually 40,000 because there’s so many games a year it’s hard to fill the seats every single game.

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