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Monthly Newsletter (January 2001) - Bill G. Hoppes, EditorReferee Calendar of Events
Meeting Agenda January Meeting: We will view an USSF referee training video, "Gamesmanship" Can you tell a foul from a dive? This USSF video presents some of the more common such techniques that are finding their way into youth level games. A general discussion will follow. From The President’s Whistle , Michelle KuieeThe following officers were elected to the steering committee at the December meeting.
Two new positions were added to the steering committee:
Articles CYSA Annual Meeting and Referee Clinic coming up in Oakland The Annual General Meeting and Referee Clinic for CYSA North will be held on, Saturday, February 3, 2001 at the Oakland Marriott City Center and Hotel, 1001 Broadway Oakland, CA. The featured speaker is FIFA referee Kevin Stott. Following is the agenda. Referee Clinic Agenda
There will be a special youth session on Saturday, February 3, 2001, from 1:00-3:00. This session will be by the 2000 CYSA Youth Referees of the Year, Tiffany Courange and Scott Rief. There is a dinner and dance, Saturday evening. Call CYSA office for tickets. The Oakland Marriott will have special rates for soccer guests at the hotel. To get the special rate, call Marriott by January 11, 2001. Exercise holds key to fountain of youth By Judy Foreman, 1/2/2001 (Submitted by Ken Mitchell) Johnny Kelley did everything the experts say we should if we want to age well: He started exercising young and never stopped. Too small to play football for his local team in West Medford, Kelley turned to running at 18, and launched the most storied marathoning career in Boston history. Over the years, he ran in 61 Boston Marathons, winning twice and placing second seven times. He also ran the New York Marathon 15 times (he won it twice), and made three US Olympic teams. Today, at 93, he lives in East Dennis and still jogs, swims and goes to the gym several times a week to work out with his trainer. Exercise, said Jay Olshansky, a senior scientist at the Center on Aging at the University of Chicago, is the closest thing we've got to a fountain of youth. Granted, even the most conscientious of athletes cannot finally escape the ravages of time. Kelley finally gave up his beloved Boston Marathon at age 84, and, these days, he's more of a walker than a runner. But his very prowess, even now, suggests that human beings can remain strong and fit for many more years than most people think. Vigorous exercise such as running and brisk walking can add years to your life - about 21/2 years if you start before age 35; six months if you start at 75 - largely by lowering your risk of heart disease, cancer and otherchronic diseases. Strength training (weight lifting) has not yet been shown to add years to life, but it clearly boosts the quality of life by giving you the muscle power to move around, take care of yourself and remain independent. But how far can you push the limits? How good can an aging athlete really be? The short answer, sadly, is probably not quite as fit, fast and strong as you were in your youthful heyday, assuming you had one. But you can be a lot fitter, faster, and stronger than you might think; even if you take up exercise after years of sloth. No matter what you do, for instance, ''VO2-max,'' or aerobic capacity – the maximum rate at which the heart, lungs and muscles can burn oxygen to make energy - declines with age. If you don't do regular, aerobic exercise, it falls 10 percent per decade after age 25, several studies have shown. If you do, it declines at half that rate. But that's not as discouraging as it may sound. In fact, some aging jocks nowadays can do what was once thought impossible. A century ago, even world-record holders couldn't run a mile as fast as some 40-year-old masters athletes do today, according to a recent editorial in the Journal of Gerontology. The increasingly impressive performance of older jocks may be due in part to the fact that, as baby boomers age, there's a bigger pool of older athletes out there, which allows some to become superstars. The most powerful message emerging from recent research into fitness and aging is a simple one: You have to keep exercising if you want to maintain strength and prolong life, even if you were a star jock early in life. One study, published in 1996, showed that even men who were elite athletes in their youth were no better off than sedentary folks if they stopped working out. The men were rowers who won a silver medal for the United States at the 1972 Olympics, and researchers subjected them to numerous physiological tests that year, then again in 1982 and 1992. After the Olympics, most of the men put their energies into careers, not rowing, said William Evans, the senior author of the study and an exercise physiologist at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. And their fitness levels declined steadily. But one man kept training all those years. He was still at 90 percent of his aerobic capacity 20 years after the Olympics, though the tests did show he had lost some muscle power (a measure of combined strength and speed) and that his muscles were more susceptible to fatigue than they had been. Years ago, when exercise physiologists first began studying fitness and aging, what they most wanted to find out was whether regular exercise reduced the overall risk of death. It clearly does, as two pivotal studies, since confirmed again and again by other research, showed. One 25-year study of 17,000 Harvard graduates by Dr. Ralph Paffenbarger showed that expending at least 2,000 calories a week in exercise (roughly equivalent to jogging two hours a week) adds a year or more to life. Another study, by Steven Blair at the Institute for Aerobics, part of the Cooper Aerobics Center in Dallas, was equally dramatic. Blair and his colleagues followed more than 10,000 men and 3,000 women and showed that the least fit men died from all causes at the rate of 64 per 10,000 compared to 19 per 10,000 among the most fit. Among women, the least fit died at more than four times the rate of the most fit. Perhaps even more important, said Dr. Ken Cooper, the head of the center, you don't have to be among the most fit to get the benefits; even moderate fitness has a profound, positive effect on longevity. One Dallas study, in fact, showed that male college students forced to stay in bed for three weeks wound up with changes in fitness and muscle mass comparable to 20 years of aging. Most of us probably don't have whatever combination of good genes, good habits and good luck that makes Johnny Kelley such a dazzling older athlete. But you don't have to run for decades like Kelley to be extremely fit as you age. You can just follow his advice, which is, if you don't like to run, walk: ''Walking is the best exercise in the world.'' Judy Foreman is a visiting research associate in Women's Studies at Brandeis University and a fellow in medical ethics at Harvard Medical School. Her column is available at www.myhealthsense.com. Fuchsia Lives! (a little longer)-Submitted by Bob Dashner The old, standard USSF uniform colors/style can be worn until 1 Jan. 2002, not 1 Jan., 2001, as originally assumed by some. You can read the details at the California North Referee Administration (CNRA) site, http://www.cnra.net. The current black shirt with white collar and cuffs, and the current alternate uniform, fuchsia shirt with white collar and black or white cuffs can be worn through January 1, 2002, allowing the referees two and one half years to accommodate to the change (since it was originally announced in Spring, 1999). Copyright © 1999 United States Soccer Federation. All rights reserved.
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