September 01, 2010
Originally posted by: Jersey Journal

NORTH BERGEN – Three years ago, Miguel Santana and Damian Velez never thought that they would be lifting weights let alone winning medals and deadlifting over 400 pounds in the AAU Junior Olympics this summer.

On Aug. 1, at the Junior Olympic Championships in Hampton Roads, Va., the 17-year-olds finished tied for first place, each lifting a combined 992 pounds.

Damian had a bench of 192, a squat of 349 and a deadlift of 451 pounds. Miguel benched 214, had a squat of 349, and a deadlift of 429 pounds.

“It’s good for their own self-esteem,” said Jimmy Onderdonk, head coach of the North Bergen Police Athletic League weightlifting squad.

“For raw weightlifters, this is the fastest that we’ve had anyone accomplish this feat.”

Miguel and Damian were like any other 14-year-olds three years ago. They would go to school, come home and do their homework, and then play video games until bed time. That routine changed when they met Onderdonk.

“I used to be all fat,” said Miguel, who stands 5-foot-5 and weighs 223 pounds of muscle. “I was 195 pounds of fat. I used to eat all the time at McDonald’s, I would eat everything greasy. Now I eat proteins like fish.”

Miguel and a friend were walking down the street when they found the gym at 61st Street and Tonnelle Avenue. They walked in thinking it was a training ground for boxers. Once Santana saw it was a gym for weight training, he felt compelled to try out.

“When I started out I saw that the 11 other kids in the class were strong,” said Miguel. “I didn’t think I would get that strong. Now I see I am as strong as them, if not stronger.”

Damian was a very skinny kid, only 140 pounds, and he too would play video games in his room all night. Now, he hasn’t touched either his Nintendo Wii or Playstation 360 in months

“I don’t play them anymore,” Damian said. “After the first year I really got into this, and I started to eat and think about what I needed to do to get better.

“My parents got me into it. I really wanted to do it because my father had been into body building himself.”

Damian started with just a 45-pound bar, then gradually pushed his training weight into the hundreds. Now he is 200 pounds of lean muscle.

He wants to break the record for deadlifts by a 17-year-old in the 181-pound division, which is 523 pounds. He is not that far away with a deadlift of 451 pounds.

Miguel said that he has received phone calls from North Bergen’s football team to try out, but wants to stick to powerlifting.

“I want to bench 1,000 pounds. I think I can do it,” he said.

Miguel says that after winning first place at the Junior Olympics he has a new pride. “I left there with my held up high. I was really happy. I hope one day I can be the World’s Strongest Man.”

Click Here to catch some video from the event!

12U Lamorinda Monarchs Take Crown in New Era National Youth Baseball Championships 10U Team Florida Finish in Semi-Finals

AAU’s elite talent was apparent once again this past weekend at the New Era National Youth Baseball Championships in Memphis, Tennessee.

The 12U Lamorinda Monarchs from California powered past another California team, USSSA’s Los Tomateros de California and posted a final score of 2-1 to claim the victory and the championship title.

The New Era National Youth Baseball Championship pits eight of the leading national organizations against each other to determine who truly has the best 12U and 10U team in the nation. AAU, AABC, Babe Ruth, Dixie, NABF, PONY, USSSA, and Super Series each send their National Championship team in the 12U and 10U age divisions to Memphis to settle once and for all who has the best team in the country for the season.

AAU talent always stands out in this tournament. In the three years of the tournament’s history the AAU has won one of the age divisions every year. This year the 12U Monarchs, in 2009 it was AAU’s 10U North Texas Bulldogs, and in the inaugural year, 2008 – the 12U Chet Lemon’s Juice. No other national organization has collected equal or more victories.

The MVP for the 12U NYBC was Nicholas Hoerner. Nico racked up six Ks and gave up on four hits and one run in the game. At the plate it was his two-run homer that gave the Monarchs the edge they needed for the victory. Hoerner’s teammates gave their all-out effort in the field to hold the normally high-scoring Tomateros to only one run. It was a tremendous outing for the entire team.

The AAU 10U National Champions, Team Florida, also had an outstanding showing in Memphis, coming in 3rd place. Team Florida beat Super Series’ Banditos Black 5-3, Dixie’s Shreveport 12-2, and PONY’s William S. Hart 12-1, before falling in the semi-finals to NABF’s DQ Crushers 5-2. The Crushers moved on to the championship game where they defeated the Banditos Black to win the 10U division.

The teams that will represent AAU in the 2011 New Era National Youth Baseball Championships will be the 10U champion at AAU Nationals June 21-26, 2011 and the 12U champion at AAU Nationals June 26-July 1. Both tournaments are held at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports at Walt Disney World® Resort in Orlando, Florida.

AAU Baseball salutes the Lamorinda Monarchs and Team Florida as superb ambassadors of the AAU program!

Originally found at www.pioneerlocal.com
Written By: Bill McClean

They stunned Karis Kovacs, those steps along The Great Wall of China. Amazed her. The Warren High School freshman saw them for the first time this summer, in 100-degree heat, in the country in which she was born 14 years ago.

Her adoptive mother, Colleen, was there too, every unique step of the way. Karis, born in Changzhou, was adopted by Illinois parents when she was six months old.

“Every step is different, handmade,” said Karis Kovacs, a Gurnee resident. “Different sizes, thousands of steps. That kind of made it difficult to climb. It was amazing, seeing history like that, seeing The Great Wall, walking those steps. We only stayed half a day, though, because of the heat.”

Kovacs did not leap The Great Wall of China in a single bound. But she might have, had she remembered to pack a trampoline for the 10-day trip to the host country of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Kovacs, a member of the Ultimate Gymnastics Club’s Trampoline and Tumbling team since its inception in 2002, excels well above trampolines, uses them to win national championships. She won her eighth national championship in August in Virginia. Eighth. Remember, she’s only 14 years old.

Kovacs captured the AAU Junior Olympics title on the double-mini earlier this month. It was her fourth such U.S. title. Boing, boing, boing, boing. She also has claimed four national synchro trampoline championships.

“I watch her at practice every day,” said Warren senior Kelci Shulz, an Ultimate star and the reigning Level 9 Eastern National Gymnastics champion on the balance beam. “She’s really good. She looks fearless, will try anything. She has awesome skills.”

The double-mini event can be doubly scary. A competitor sprints down a runway, performs a move on the front end of a trampoline, executes another move on the back end, and then attempts to stick a dismount. Kovacs does a full-and-a-half-on maneuver (a Rudi) before throwing a double-full-off trick (two twists).

“It might seem like I’m fearless,” said Kovacs, who recently made the Blue Devils’ varsity diving team. “But when it comes right down to it, there’s fear. I have fear, sure. You have to get over that. You cannot think about fear. My mind is clear when I compete. When it’s clear, it’s easier for me to go for it.”

Kovacs made the U.S. Trampoline Association Elite Team as a double-mini pick before title No. 8. She and 27 others USTA springers will train next month at Camp Woodward in central Pennsylvania, near State College. She works out five days a week at Gurnee-based Ultimate, under Trampoline and Tumbling coach Rose Simpson.

“Karis has natural talent, works hard, concentrates well,” said Simpson. “Good air sense too. But it’s concentration that is crucial. The ability to concentrate, it has to be there in this sport. If it’s not there, guess what? You’re going to get hurt.”

Kovacs was 5 when her feet first hit a trampoline at Ultimate. It was in a recreation class, she recalled. Kovacs and five others made Ultimate’s inaugural trampoline team, back in the 2002-03 season. Since then it has been full-speed-down-the-runway ahead.

And full somersaults.

“It’s fun. It really is,” said Kovacs. “You have to have fun, right? You are bouncing off a trampoline. You are flipping, somersaulting in the air. You are up there. Fun.”

Source: www.fox43.com

The New Era National Youth Baseball Championships will be held in Cordova, Tennessee (Memphis area) August 26-29. In the 10U and 12U age groups, each of eight national youth baseball organizations will enter their national championship team to battle for bragging rights to be named “the best of the best” in the country.

The eight teams competing are one team each for AAU, AABC, Babe Ruth, Dixie, NABF, PONY, Super Series, and USSSA.

Representing AAU in the 10U age group is Team Florida from Palm Harbor, Florida. Team Florida emerged victors from a field of 24 10U teams at the AAU Nationals held at ESPN Wide World of Sports in Orlando, Florida soundly defeating their opponents by a combined 137-31.

From the other side of the country the Lamorinda Monarchs is AAU’s 12U team. The Monarchs hail from Point Richmond, California and surrounding areas. Twenty-four teams fought for the right to represent AAU at the New Era National Youth Baseball Championships, including most of the top-ranked 12U teams in the country. The Lamorinda Monarchs proved who was number one among them.

Will Team Florida defend AAU’s 2009 10U title in the New Era Youth Baseball Championships? Will the Lamorinda Monarchs prove again they are the best team in the country? Follow the action live to find out. Good luck to Team Florida and the Lamorinda Monarchs. Go AAU!

There will also be scoring for all 30 games throughout the entire tournament August 26-29, both 10U and 12U at
http://www.pointstreak.com/baseball/scoreboard.html?leagueid=115

Jean Hodges, Tournament Director, along the team from Singapore.

Once again, Jump Rope was a complete success at this year’s AAU Junior Olympic Games. Last August 3rd to the 7th, Jump Ropers from all over the United States, Singapore, Australia and Canada, came together to compete; demonstrating why Jump Rope is a fast growing sport. We look forward to next year’s AAU Junior Olympic Games in New Orleans! We are looking to have over one thousand athletes; are you ready for the challenge?

Jessica Long won the gold medal in the Taekwondo Individual Forms Competition at the AAU Junior Olympic Games held July 31-Aug. 7 in Hampton Roads, Va.

Long, of McHenry, won in the 10 and 11-year-old advanced division. She also was the Illinois state champion.

“She competed against the best in the country,” said Jerry Keys, owner of Key’s Martial Arts Academy, where Long trains. “It’s a real big deal.”

Long also qualified for the AAU national tournament a year ago, but the results this year were dramatically different.

“She didn’t do too well,” Keys said of Long’s performance last year. “I think nerves got a hold of her.”

That experience might have played a part in her desire to push herself to train harder. Her expectations heading into the national competition were high.

“I actually thought I was going to do pretty well,” Long said. “I trained very hard for it, and my form really improved a lot.”

Even with her success, Keys said that Long is always looking to improve and never is completely satisfied.

“She’s a perfect student,” Keys said. “Even though she’d win a tournament she was like, ‘What do I need work on?’”

Forms is an individual event in which the competitors perform set patterns of martial arts movements, including kicking and punching. Keys said it was originally taught to children centuries ago to prepare them for battle as adults.

Long said she liked forms because it combines elements of grace and power.

“They’re very graceful. I like graceful things,” Long said. “[And] you can add power into them with kicks and turns.”

Hidden Path also performs well at junior Olympics: Also at the Junior Olympics in Virginia, Hidden Path Arts Academy in Marengo brought home 12 medals.

Judith Morales led the effort with a first-place finish in kumite, kobudo and kata in the 11 and 12-year-old beginning/novice division.

In the 10-year-old beginning/novice division, Max Doyle was first in kumite, second in kobudo and third in kata. Elise Brevik was second in Kumite and third kobudo.

Elizabeth Barry took first place in kobudo, second in kumite and third in kata in the 14 to 16-year-old beginning/novice division.

Kelsey Sterritt, in the 16-year-old intermediate/advanced division took third in kumite.

Elrod qualifies for state: Rebecca Elrod, 11, of Cary, qualified to swim in the 400 freestyle relay with her Mundelein Mustangs teammates at the Illinois Speedo Long Course age group championship July 30 at Lincolnshire. Elrod also swims with the Cary Barracudas and the McHenry Marlins.

Congratulations to the 2010 Joel Ferrell Award Winners for Trampoline and Tumbling at the AAU Junior Olympic Games. This year’s award winners are Erin Jauch from the Fox Valley Power Tumblers and James Hawkins from Dynamite Twisters.  These two outstanding athletes competed in the 2010 AAU Junior Olympic Games in Hampton Roads, VA, and July 29 – August 7, 2010.

The Joel Ferrell Award is presented in honor of the former AAU President and Vice President of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and a chair of the AAU Junior Olympic Program for many years.  He was instrumental in the growth of these Games.  This is the most prestigious award that recognizes outstanding athletic accomplishments and sportsmanship of an athlete representing each official sport at the AAU Junior Olympic Games.

James Hawkins, age 18, from Owingsville, Kentucky is a 7 time Gold medalist, and a 4 time All American with the AAU.  James has competed in the AAU Trampoline and Tumbling program for 9 years and has been very successful!  He was honored with the 2010 Nissen-Grisswold Cup Award Winner, George Nissen Memorial Cup Winner, Valedictorian, Kentucky Governor’s Scholar, Eagle Scout and Kentucky Colonel.  Needless to say this young talented athlete excels on and off the floor.  Congratulations to James and the AAU wishes him the best of luck in his bright future!

Erin Jauch of Crystal Lake, Illinois has been competing in Trampoline and Tumbling for 11 years, 9 of those years with the AAU.  She is a member of the AAU National Team, received several AAU Junior Olympic titles, Athlete of the Year for Double Mini and Trampoline, and honored with 12 All American Awards as well as several AAU District awards.  Erin is a great leader on and off the court, she coaches younger athletes with her club inspiring them to be the best they can be.  The AAU is anxious to watch Erin grow and excel in her sport for years to come!

Congratulations to the 2010 Joel Ferrell Award Winners for Swimming at the AAU Junior Olympic Games. This year’s award winners are Julia Cunningham who swam unattached from Pennsylvania and David Stevens with the Bluewater Barracudas from Florida.  These two outstanding athletes competed in the 2010 AAU Junior Olympic Games in Hampton Roads, VA, and July 29 – August 7, 2010.

The Joel Ferrell Award is presented in honor of the former AAU President and Vice President of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and a chair of the AAU Junior Olympic Program for many years.  He was instrumental in the growth of these Games.  This is the most prestigious award that recognizes outstanding athletic accomplishments and sportsmanship of an athlete representing each official sport at the AAU Junior Olympic Games.

David Stevens, age 18, from Fort Walton Beach, Florida is an outstanding athlete.  David competed in 8 events throughout the games: 100 Fly, 50 Free, 300 IM, 100 Back, 200 Free Mixed Relay, 400 Free, 100 Free and the 100 Breast.  Congratulations to James and the AAU wishes him the best of luck in his bright future!

Julia Cunningham (15), the recipient of the Female Joel Ferrell Award at the 2010 AAU National Junior Olympics in Newport News, Virginia, lives in Yardley Pennsylvania with her mother and father. In September, she will be entering her sophomore year at Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey, as an honors student and a member of the varsity swim team. This will be her second year at the varsity level. The Peddie girls’ team won the 2009 Eastern Championships in Philadelphia. She is a member of the Peddie Orchestra, and is a former member of the Bucks County Junior Symphony. Julia has won age group state swimming championships in New Jersey as a member of the Xcel Swimming Club in Princeton, and in Des Moines, Iowa with Central Iowa Aquatics. In Newport News Julia won three individual gold medals, two silvers and three Bronze. She previously competed in AAU National Junior Olympics in 2009 winning four gold medals in Des Moines, Iowa, and setting the Iowa State Record for the 200 meter butterfly, and the AAU National Junior Olympics in 2005, which was also held in Des Moines. Julia has been swimming competitively for nine years. Julia also spends time caring for her dog, four cats and a turtle.

The Next Generation of Golfers
…a tribute to Davis Love

Davis Love III is one of the most respected players on the PGA Tour. His book, “Every Shot I Take” is a tribute to his father, a PGA Golf Professional who died in a plane crash at age 53.

As a Teaching Professional, his father left behind closets and cabinets filled with loose pages and legal pads containing his notes about the golf swing. Whenever he had an idea, he wrote it down.

When he made the biggest professional decision of his life, to leave the security of the head professional job at the Atlanta Country Club to become a fulltime golf teacher in Sea Island, GA, he weighed the pluses and minuses—on his legal pads.

His father taught him to play the game of golf and left him a legacy of family devotion: Davis states…..”I wish every golfer could have a kind of golfing education I had.

The Indian River Golf Foundation considers this a worthwhile goal for the next generation of golfers in our community.

With due respect to other sports…the IRGF buys into the statement of Davis Love III…

You want to teach children to play by the rules, you teach them golf.
You want to teach children to respect the rights of others, you teach them golf.
You want to teach children to tell the truth, to be responsible for their own actions, to control their emotions, you teach them golf.
You want children to learn to appreciate the out-doors and the beauty of a piece of land and the drama of a sunset, you teach them golf.
AND WHILE THEY’RE LEARNING… they’re having the time of their lives.