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Displaying items by tag: YMCA

SARATOGA SPRINGS – As the Saratoga YMCA’s Regional Basketball League winds down to the final game of the season this weekend, the organization and its basketball league assistant Mike Laudicina are already at work on something new to follow it.

Starting this summer, the Saratoga YMCA will be offering its first ever summer youth basketball league program.  The program will begin on June 22 with a clinic, running from 6-9 p.m., and featuring locally renowned basketball coaches Fred Shear and Matt Usher.  The league itself will begin on June 29 and run for the rest of the summer, ending on August 31.  The program is open to kids from grade 5-8, and registration will begin May 22.

According to Laudicina, this new program was created due to popular demand from parents. 

“I’ve been doing [youth basketball] for 25 years, I started in 1992,” Laudicina said.  “And I’ve always had parents say to me, ‘We wish there was something in the summer.’”

Laudicina said that these parents were eager to have YMCA summer youth league as an alternative to the Amateur Athletics Union, which they found to be too costly and which would often leave their children on the bench most of the time.  The new summer league will be open to both boys and girls, and to young athletes of all skill levels.  The league is designed to be instructional, with an hour of practice each week on Wednesdays, followed a game on Thursdays.  

In contrast to the standard youth basketball league, which held its final game on Thursday, the youth league will skew younger, being open to kids in grades 5-8.  The standard youth league is made up of two divisions, the junior division for grades 6-8, and the senior league for grades 9-12.  The reason for this difference, Laudicina said, was again in response to parental demand, as there was more desire for a summer program from the parents of kids going into those grades.

Being a program that runs in the summer, this new league will be drawing kids from other leagues, both YMCA and others, that will not be running during the season.  According to Laudicina, they are expecting to bring in players from the Saratoga Springs City Recreation Department’s basketball league, among others.

“Nobody really does something like this,” Laudicina said.  “This is something brand new.  I don’t know any other Y’s that do it.” 

As an instructional program, Laudicina and the rest of the Saratoga YMCA is hoping that the summer will not just teach kids the fundamentals of basketball, sportsmanship, and teamwork, but also the Y’s core values: caring, honesty, respect, and responsibility.   There is also the hope that some of the players who participate this summer will move over to playing in the standard youth league when it starts up again in the fall. 

“It’s like a feeder program,” Laudicina said.  “Because a lot of the kids in the junior division will be moving up to the senior division soon.  So, getting more young people into the league will help feed it and keep it going.”

Published in Sports
Thursday, 06 August 2015 09:59

Handicapping Pharoah’s Next Move

By Brendan O’Meara

For Saratoga TODAY

What this past weekend showed, if nothing else, was a shape of things to come for the $1.6 million Travers Stakes. 

 

Could the Travers be a one-horse walkover starring American Pharoah? It may as well be because that’s what we saw by his visually impressive and comedic performance in the $1.75 million Haskell Invitational this past Sunday.

 

Comedic in that it was a complete joke; he made a mockery of a field of decent 3-year-olds and he did it in third gear with the brake lights glowing scarlet. His final time of 1:47.80 was made all the more impressive due to the lack of urging. If he wanted to—and that’s the thing with American Pharoah—he could have run this race in well under 1:47. 

 

Mr. Jordan, a horse who won the Pegasus Stakes at Monmouth, was a pace threat in the Haskell and hung on for about 46 seconds before he was, by all accounts, eased to a canter. What he experienced on the front end was that American Pharoah breathes different air. Not every Jedi can be Yoda.

 

So Victor Espinoza, aboard American Pharoah, didn’t so much say, “Go” with a quarter-mile to go as “This bores me” and let the reins out a few transcendent inches. Keen Ice gave a spirited chase before Lucy pulled the football out from his outstretched foot.

 

In that final eighth of a mile, you could hear the gears turning: What race will American Pharoah target next? (NBC’s Kenny Rice pressed and pressed and pressed, but all he got was that ‘Would-You-Let-Me-Enjoy-This?’ look from owner Ahmed Zayat and trainer Bob Baffert).

 

Saratoga-philes will cry Travers, as they are prone to do. A Mid-Summer Derby with the Kentucky Derby winner jacks up the ‘derbyness’ of the entire day. It feels more authentic and the New York Racing Association brass will, no doubt, see two cherries verging on three on the slot machine should Zayat point his van up the Northway.

 

Given 48 hours to think, Zayat made his motives clear: He wants Saratoga and he wants it bad. 

 

"I have made it very clear that I want to go to the Travers," Zayat said in Ron Mitchell’s BloodHorse.com article. "We are motivated by what defines his legacy. If it were up to me, it would be the Travers. I have made my desires known to my trainer. He knows what I want."

 

There’s no subtext here for Baffert to read into. A trainer’s No. 1 job isn’t to train horses, it’s to placate owners, but Zayat may want to hear Baffert out if he does, in fact, want to ship somewhere south and west of Saratoga Springs.

 

American Pharoah has toyed with restricted company since March, so staying in his own class is like Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer facing high schoolers. Just three weeks away sits the Grade 1 Pacific Classic at Del Mar against older horses and this could be the chance to release a monster on the older division.

 

What more can American Pharoah do against the 3-year-olds? He beat the Grade I Wood Memorial winner (Frosted) twice. He beat the Grade I Santa Anita Derby winner (Dortmund) twice. He beat the horse that set the mile record at Churchill Downs (Competitive Edge). At this point American Pharoah’s greatest competition are ghosts.

 

The only reason he would exclusively run against 3-year-olds again (and it would be only one more time) is out of Zayat’s charity to bring him to Saratoga.

 

The Pharoah is already the Horse of the Year and Champion Three-Year-Old, so what’s to prove? His only challenge over the following two or three races are against older horses. All great 3-year-olds eventually approach the mountain previously summited by older horses. The tenured elites have been waiting.

 

Back in 2009, a similar line of reasoning was used for the campaigning of Rachel Alexandra. After she beat her 3-year-old fillies in the Kentucky Oaks by 20 1/4 lengths and then in the Mother Goose by 19 1/4 lengths, what more could she have done against her class?

 

She also beat 3-year-old males in the Preakness and the Haskell. What more could she have done against them? The only logical step, in the spirit of competition, was the older males. It squeezed everything out of Rachel Alexandra to “raise the rafters” at the Spa, but she did it, even at the expense of her 4-year-old year.

 

As it stands, American Pharoah hasn’t been tested since the Kentucky Derby and he seems to be getting better, as hard as that is to believe, which makes the Travers a hard sell from a pure athletic perspective. That, and American Pharoah will scare away more horses than the ghost of Ramesses II.

 

The only way the Travers has much of a chance is to bump its purse up from $1.25 million to $2 million, and it struck a happy medium at $1.6 million. That will attract more victims. A purse of that size will ensure a full field instead of five or six horses running for second. 

 

Saratoga stands to benefit from increased attendance, betting handle and patrons’ trips to the Shake Shack should American Pharoah show. It’s only fair.

 

“I was very surprised that Saratoga raised their purse," Zayat said. "I have not asked (racetrack representatives) for a nickel. I had zero financial discussions with them. The purse raise came as a surprise to me.”

 

Saratoga stands to earn that extra $350,000 back and then some. 

 

The other argument for the Travers is the mere fact that this is the only crack a 3-year-old colt gets at it. It’s the Mid-Summer Derby, after all. The last Triple Crown winner to run in the Travers was Affirmed, but there’s no Alydar stepping into quarter-inch bends to, at the very least, make American Pharoah appear mortal. 

 

With all his time parading around the East Coast, a trip to the Pacific Ocean is only fair to the fans out west. Something for Baffert to think about, assuming the thinking hasn’t already been done for him.

 

It’s too early for the Saratoga Springs Chamber of Commerce to lace Broadway with American Pharoah banners, but in the meantime it’s worth basking in what he’s done and the hope in what remains.

 

Brendan O’Meara is the author of Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-Year-Old Filly Rachel Alexandra Beat the Boys and Became Horse of the Year, now out in paperback

Published in News

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Veteran handicappers Tom Amello and Nick Kling, longtime co-hosts of “Trackfacts Live” on the Capital OTB television network, will participate in a Travers Stakes preview discussion at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame on Thursday, August 22 at 10:30 a.m. The program is free and open to the public and will feature video of key races leading up to the Midsummer Derby as well as a question-and-answer session with the panelists.

Published in News
Tuesday, 20 August 2013 11:08

Enhanced Security for Horses in Travers

SARATOGA SPRINGS — There will be enhanced security measures taken this weekend at the Saratoga Race Track for the horses running in the million dollar Travers Stakes.

Published in News
Friday, 16 August 2013 09:54

Travers Week Celebrations Kick Off

SARATOGA SPRINGS — This year may be one of the most exciting Travers week yet with a number of events and celebrations leading up to the famed Mid-Summer Derby next Saturday, as well as the showdown of three of thoroughbred racings’ top contenders this year—Kentucky Derby winner Orb, Belmont top finisher Palace Malice and Haskell Invitational winner Verrazano—all scheduled to race in the million dollar Travers Stakes. 

Published in News
Thursday, 08 August 2013 14:45

A Look at Thoroughbred Racing Immortals

There’s a bit of a lull this time every meet. The momentum from the first few weekends has worn off, yet it’s before the big finale of Travers and then closing weekend. There’s no better time for Saratoga to turn its attention to racing’s immortals.

Published in News
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