The Sarasota Scullers won a record 11 gold medals and tied for the overall team championship at the 45th Florida Scholastic Rowing Association championships Sunday.

The Scullers, comprised of boys and girls from local high schools and middle schools, tied Winter Park High School for the 2010 title in the two-day event, said Teresa Rawe, whose daughter, Cara, 17, is a rower on the Sarasota Scullers.

The championships were held at Nathan Benderson Park, a venue rapidly gaining attention from rowing fans in the state.

Some D-TagZ feature a more classic look with just black etching, while the others are funkier and have a soft enamel colorfill. Just like the medals, they call come with an engraving plate for the reverse side so you can still add a name or personal message and logo.

Your recipients will love the look of the Dog-TagZ. Not only will they be cool to wear but they will recognize all players for their hard work!

Remember the days when all you got for winning that intense tournament were dinky basketball medals?

Well, boring now you can say goodbye to boring basketball awards!

Basketball trophies have come a long way! I’m talking about trophies that have bobbleheads, spinning sports balls and movable arms and legs!

Can’t decide which image or design to use for your basketball team? Let them choose! Use a different image insert for each medal! Use a different saying or logo on each trophy! Not one has to be alike!
Want to go with a more formal approach? Get basketball plaques! You can engrave anything you want on them or even insert a photo of your basketball team. Either way, a basketball plaque mounted on a wall is sure to create memories that will last for generations.

Going along with a classy theme, you can get acrylic basketball awards, glass basketball awards and crystal basketball awards. The crystal awards feature a basketball player lasered inside to create an interesting unique 3-D look.

Maybe you don’t want to make a big deal out of a win or even a loss! So you can opt for basketball pins, basketball pins, basketball ribbons, or basketball certificates. This way nobody is forgotten and everyone will have a little souvenir of from the good times or the bad times!

So remember, you shouldn’t have to feel obligated to get basketball trophies & awards for your team, but rather, you should want to! Designing and building a basketball trophy has never been more fun!

trophies

A jubilant Chaffey High team took home the towering Academic Decathlon trophy Thursday night during the 26th annual awards ceremony at the National Orange Show Events Center.

Head coach Steven Mercado, in his 12th year, and fellow coach Patty Gulino also carried off first-place trophies in all categories, including math, economics, social science, language/literature, music, art, essays, speech and interviews.
he team captured first in the Super Quiz at Arroyo Valley High.

Mercado attributed Chaffey’s success to hard work studying before and after school. His team was comprised heavily of seniors, and it beat out second pace Redlands High, with two seniors, five juniors and two sophomores.

Redlands High had won four consecutive championships, but school coach Donna St. George was gracious in defeat.

“I think Chaffey has just an awesome team this year,” said St. George, whose teams have won 12 Academic Decathlons during the 19 years she has coached at Redlands.
“Last year they came so close. They thought they had us. He’s a great coach, and it’s a deserving team.”

Chaffey High will compete in the state Academic Decathlon competition next month in Sacramento.

Rancho Cucamonga High took third place, followed by Kaiser, Arroyo Valley and Redlands East Valley high schools.

The annual scholastic contest pitted students from 30 high schools. Chaffey High’s first team consisted of Andrea McNellis, Andrew Haney, Camille Brown, Jesus Albarran, Joseph Escobar, Josh Escobar, Michael Andreas, Michael Rollins and Will Jacobsen.

Chaffey team members claimed seven of the top nine individual overall medals.

Originally posted by Michael Perrault.

Just what your basketball team needs

basketball trophies

Ever wonder what will give your army of basketball-ers that extra boost to win those lovely basketball trophies & medals? Maybe it is the basketball trophies & basketball medals themselves! By designing and building your very own trophy you can cater to the needs and likings of your squad of basketball players so that every game is a victory and every award is one of their most prized possessions.

Start here: Begin with what type of award you want. You can choose from trophies: gold or silver, basketball sculptures with with hand painted colors or bronze finishes, or
basketball plaques which are offered in wood acrylic or rosewood, among others. Let us also not forget the ever ubiquitous basketball medals & basketball ribbons. You can choose from a selection of styles that include 3D medals, a really unique flip-sided design, or even choose from one of many images to easily insert.

You can also opt for a classier look for your basketball award by choosing crystal or the more affordable, acrylic. These glass basketball awards and acrylic basketball awards can feature a male or basketball female player holding a basketball or if you prefer, an engraved basketball on the award to stand alone.

Finally, don’t want to spend an exuberant amount on your basketball trophies & basketball awards? Look into some cute and simple basketball pins that can easily be uniformly donned by a proud basketball team.

The 2009 Grand Trophy winners include Munich, Germany’s klink, liedig werbeagentur gmbh, winning the Grand Award for “We Love Cinema” in the Business Theater category for Germany’s Tele 5. The winning piece was created to engage viewers and brand the new station as the preferred movie channel. Mexico City, Mexico’s Televisa SA de CV won the Grand for “Imaginantes Serrat, Cortazar” in the Craft: Animation category. The award-winning entry used bold animation to introduce the audience to a different way of looking at television. Wilder of London, England was awarded the Grand Trophy in the Short Film category for their entry “Ripple,” a black comedy about the randomness of fate and the results of one malicious act. Gothenburg, Sweden’s Stark Film & Event took home the Grand in the Industrial Productions: Internal Use category for their film titled “Night at the Elyseum,” a historic piece celebrating 100 years of the electrical network Goteborg Energi AB Nat.

For the second year in a row, England’s The Edge Picture Company swept the awards, taking home the title of Production Company of the Year. The London-based company was awarded 6 Gold Medals, 3 Silver, 5 Bronze and 7 Finalist Certificates. Entries receiving Gold Medals in the category of Industrial Productions: Internal Use, include: “Our Story,” for agri-business client Syngenta, “The Impossible Story,” for professional services firm Deloitte, depicting a 3D pop-up book brought to life, and “Make It Happen,” for the financial organization RBS Group. “Make It Happen” also won a second Gold Medal in the Craft: Cinematography category. The following entries received Gold Medals in the Industrial Productions: Public Relations category: “Dreams,” a piece created for Thompson, the travel company, to help employees change the way they see the world, and “Opening Doors,” a film about domestic abuse for Surrey Domestic Abuse Outreach Service.

The 2009 NYF International Film and Video Awards received entries from 30 countries spanning 5 continents. The competition honors “The World’s Best Work™” in feature-length, short and documentary films, informational, educational, corporate and industrial film productions, home video, and student productions.

All entries were judged by a panel of industry experts, including producers, directors, writers and other media professionals. All winning entries are promoted by our network of representatives in 62 countries around the world.
Originally posted by Gayle Mandel at MarketWire.com.

They’re 10 golden, gleaming trophies, each touting him as a “winner” at T-ball, soccer, basketball. The most recent is a pewter mega-monument he earned playing football—on a team that lost every game by about 30 points.

While certainly a winner in my book, the kid has never once been on a championship team. Or even a mediocre one. Still, he has received more trophies than birthday cakes in his life. And he’s not alone.
Mini-athletes get trophies these days just for showing up. They’re de rigeur, as much a part of kids’ sports now as Gatorade and ghastly, costly team photos. At the end-of-season pizza party (also a given), every team member gets a sizable statuette on an engraved pedestal. Play-off teams probably get bigger ones; ahem, I, wouldn’t know.

“Claire got a soccer trophy even though she sat on her fanny and cried through every practice,” says a mom I know.

What’s the cost of being so generous with awards that were once reserved for the best of the best? Are we championing mediocrity? Will our kids expect “atta boys” for everything they do?

“There is a definite shift toward an ‘everybody wins’ attitude in sports these days,” says a local dad. “It’s good and bad.” Getting a trophy was his five-year-old daughter’s favorite part of her first soccer season—which explains why, at the start of the next season, she came off the field asking, “Where’s my trophy?”

Trophy inflation seems to have started with the self-esteem movement of the 1980s, when pop psychology convinced us that “effort” matters more than “success.” Some called this progress; others deemed it hogwash.

“I abhor awarding trophies willy-nilly,” says a soccer, basketball, and baseball coach. “I have strong suspicions the trophy industry is behind the ‘trophies for everyone’ tradition.” An outrageous accusation? Perhaps. “I suspect the Trophy-Industrial Complex is behind the subprime debacle, as well.”

In real life, loss comes frequently—elections, jobs, relationships—and it forces us to reassess our performance and try harder next time. Isn’t it better to let our kids taste disappointment now, when the terms are small, than to “protect” them from it till they’re grown?

A friend of mine who works in human resources says that, as young adults, the “participation trophy generation” exudes a distinct sense of entitlement. “We don’t give merit raises,” she finds herself explaining, “just for doing your job.”

But not everyone is anti-trophy. Proponents say the token effigies bolster kids’ spirits after a brutal season.

“We aren’t rewarding them for not winning,” argues one coach. “We’re rewarding them for showing up regularly, practicing, working as a team, learning the skills and rules of the game, playing through disappointment and pain.”

Well, when you put it like that …

“Kids can be so hard on themselves and feel undeserving even when they played well,” adds my cousin, whose children play up to four sports at a time. “Some kids have uber-competitive parents and a little trophy may be their only positive reinforcement.”

It’s a fair point. It’s not like we’ve stopped scoring the games; kids, it turns out, are keenly aware of the difference between bench-warming trophies and VIP trophies. And while they may treasure a thanks-for-playing memento as a souvenir from an exacting season, they’ll be the first to tell you this: It’s small consolation for failure.

“There are only three trophies I’m really proud of,” says a sensible fifth-grader I know, who has won big in soccer, hoops, and music. “The rest I call ‘loser trophies‘ because you get them for losing.

“I actually think they’re a waste of metal.”
Originally posted by Starshine Roshell.

Following a decision of the Technical Synchronized Swimming Committee, a new competition session truly unique to this year’s Trophy has been added to the Program on Day 1 following the Duet Free event. A Thematic Duet, which will be performed to music reflecting the culture of the Host Country with a duration of 2 minutes plus/minus 15 seconds, will be presented. Exceptionally, the use of accessories in costuming will be allowed for this duet, as it has been specifically included to increase the beauty and creative appeal of the event for the benefit of the audience.

Teams from Canada, China, Egypt, Spain, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and Russia will take part in the 2008 World Trophy. In this group, we find all the medalists of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing (CHN). Russia, winner of the World Trophy in the first two editions (2006 in Moscow and 2007 in Rio de Janeiro) and Olympic champion in duet and team, is naturally the team ‘to beat’ in the Spanish capital, but taking into account that the competition does not reward for technical merit (in which the Russians are clearly above the rest of the field), this circumstance renders the final outcome more difficult to predict. Furthermore, and according to the latest entry list received from Russia, the stars Anastasia Ermakova/Anastasia Davydova (Olympic, World and European champions) will not swim in Madrid.

In Rio, in 2007, Spain was very close to securing the final victory (in fact, the overall ranking of the Trophy is done by adding the notes in each of the events), having won the team event. In the end, Russia triumphed with 296.333 against Spain’s 295.000. At home, Gemma Mengual and her teammates will certainly look for first place on the podium, after a quite successful Olympic Games, where they took the first medals ever for their country in this discipline – two silver.

Besides this European duel, the other two medaled teams in Beijing – Japan and China – will also try to display their best performances in Madrid. At the Olympics, Japan took the bronze in the duet, while China was third in the team.

The FINA World Trophy, streamed live on the FINA website www.fina.org, will distribute US$ 154,500 in prize money, distributed as follows: 1st place – US$ 50,000; 2nd place – US$ 30,000; 3rd place – US$ 20,000; 4th place – US$ 15,000; 5th place – US$ 12,500; 6th place – US$ 10,000; 7th place – US$ 9,000; 8th place – US$ 8,000

Originally posted by Swimmingworldmagazine.com

Trophies are treasured prizes — whether bestowed on professional athletes who have just helped their team win a national championship or presented to a youth soccer player who showed up for every game and played his heart out. Corporate executives and third-grade spelling bee winners alike gratefully receive these awards and proudly display them in their offices or bedrooms at home.

“People like to be recognized for their accomplishments, what they’ve done in the workplace or on the playing field and other avenues,” says Jay Stelmach, the maker of monuments and owner of Colonial Trophy in Lakeville.

The family owned and operated business first opened in Taunton in 1955 and has been at its current location next to Mucky’s Liquors on Route 44 since 1968.

Stelmach offers a huge selection of trophies, plaques, medals and other commemorative items for a vast variety of sports and activities. Trophies for every major sport are available and if it’s not, Stelmach takes special orders.

“I had a guy today pick up 15 cricket trophies for his cricket club, and we’ve done trophies for a chicken show, pigeon racing, stuff like that,” he says.

While youth sports teams and adult leagues make up a large portion of his clientele, jobs for local businesses and corporations keep Stelmach busy as well.

“We do a lot of work for Ocean Spray and Johnson & Johnson,” Stelmach says, while removing a Customer Focus Award plaque made for an Ocean Spray employee from the laser engraver in his shop. The engraver, which Stelmach invested in this year, has cut down on the time it takes to etch the plates for plaques and trophies. Production improvements like that help Stelmach keep up in the face of various online competitors.

Keeping up with the latest trophy trends does, too. For instance, a new soccer trophy featuring a soccer ball that spins around in the mounting, rather than the traditional soccer player figure, has been very popular this season, Stelmach said. Plug-in or battery-operated trophies that glow and flash in pastel colors are another hot item, he said. Stelmach is also doing more work in acrylic and glass engraving, which is now in greater demand with his business clients.

Originally posted by Alice Coyle from the Taunton Daily Gazette.

May 5 (Bloomberg) — Dressed in business garb on a steamy summer afternoon in the Hamptons, Philip Schwalb and Sameer Ahuja pitched their concept of a sports museum for the financial district in New York City to swimsuit-clad investors at the Surf Club of Quogue.

“We had absolutely no idea that we would be out at the beach and certainly were not dressed at all appropriately for it,” said Ahuja of that day in 2003 on New York’s Long Island. “It was a surreal experience.”

The $7 million in seed capital the pair raised from their beachfront pitch grew to $100 million in three years and gave birth to the 45,000-square-foot Sports Museum of America opening May 7 in John D. Rockefeller’s former Standard Oil Building, steps from the Charging Bull statue in Bowling Green Park near Wall Street.

In addition to individual investors’ cash, the museum is backed by $52 million in Liberty Bonds, the tax-exempt financing program created to foster economic development after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack that destroyed the World Trade Center.

The museum, which will charge $27 for admission, is designed as a tourist attraction in a neighborhood still on the mend.

“People come down here and can see something tangible that we’ve created for lower Manhattan,” said Ahuja, 33, the for- profit museum’s chief financial officer. He predicted the site will attract 1 million visitors annually. “We stand as one of the significant tourism improvements and that’s really important.”

Brandi’s Bra

The Sports Museum’s 19 galleries display the American flag that was draped around Olympic hockey goaltender Jim Craig after the U.S. won the gold medal in 1980 and the sports bra that California soccer player Brandi Chastain bared after her penalty kick led the U.S. to victory over China in the 1999 Women’s World Cup final.

College football’s Heisman Trophy and its annual award ceremony will now be based at the museum. It is also the home of the Billie Jean King International Women’s Sports Center, the only Hall of Fame dedicated to females.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts, are two of 62 partners of the museum, which will also feature items from the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

The idea for the museum was born during a visit to the Basketball Hall of Fame on Sept. 10, 2001, when Schwalb, 45, was managing a holding company for the family of Caroline Kennedy and her husband, Edwin Schlossberg.

The excursion prompted Schwalb to conclude that sports museums are in hard-to-reach places and run as nonprofit institutions that are under-funded and difficult to market.

`Lying Dormant’

“The epiphany for me was that this was just a great business idea waiting to happen,” Schwalb said in an interview. “Sports, in my view, had been really tapped in terms of being a business, and I saw this one piece of it which was lying dormant.”

Following the next day’s terrorist attack, Schwalb sought to locate the museum near the destroyed World Trade Center to help the neighborhood rebuild. Placing it in lower Manhattan was first suggested by former Senator and New York Knicks basketball star Bill Bradley, Schwalb said.

He and Ahuja got the project off the ground with the networking skills of George Motz, mayor of Quogue, New York, and president and chief executive officer of the investment advisory firm Melhado, Flynn & Associates Inc.

Beach Pitch

For the pitch at the beach club, Motz assembled Brendan Ryan, chairman of Interpublic Group’s Foote Cone and Belding unit; Edward Horowitz, a former executive at Time Warner Inc.’s HBO, Viacom Inc. and Citigroup Inc. who is now a part-owner of the Tennis Channel; and Matthew Blank, chairman and chief executive officer of Showtime Networks Inc. All three agreed to invest.

Schwalb and Ahuja later tapped Robert Kapito, president of BlackRock Inc., and Michael Ryan, former chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co.’s Global Equity Capital Markets unit, who pitched the project to their Wall Street friends.

One hundred investors provided at least $250,000 apiece. The backers include Daniel Tully, Merrill’s retired chairman; BlackRock Chairman Laurence Fink; Goldman Sachs Group Inc. President Gary Cohn; and Robert Wolf, chairman of UBS Group Americas, according to the museum.

`The Sizzle’

“Very few of them invested because they were excited about the sizzle of sports,” Ahuja said. “Most of them put us through the wringer very, very extensively in terms of due diligence.”

Investors were united by a desire to support the financial district, said Ryan, the former Merrill executive who co-founded the closely held financial-services software company Ipreo LLC.

“They had worked in lower Manhattan and were upset after Sept. 11, and they all had either children that played sports or were themselves athletes — either real or imagined,” Ryan said.

While New York is building a memorial to those killed at the World Trade Center, the district will need other projects to bolster tourism, said Dan Doctoroff, the former New York deputy mayor who supported the museum’s bond financing. Doctoroff is president of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.

Originally written by Mason Levinson, New York