CLUBS & MEMBERS:  GOOD SPORTS

Edited By Louis Marroquin

Change of pastimes ... One in 2,000 ...A winning team ... Service with a smile.

A WHOLE NEW BALL GAME
Any club member knows about paying dues, but when Wade Boggs retired last November (after 18 seasons of big-league baseball) his dues to his ballclub were clearly paid in full. With a homer against Cleveland last season, he capped his career by becoming the 23rd player to reach 3,000 career hits, one of the sport’s most exclusive fraternities. This season Boggs, who played for the Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, and his hometown Tampa Bay Devil Rays during his career, is working as a special assistant to Tampa Bay’s general manager, Chuck LaMar. His duties vary from commentating in the radio/TV booth to scouting the minor leagues, wherever his services are needed. “I’m just trying to give 25 years of professional baseball knowledge back to the game,” he says. “A lot of guys venture into different areas when they retire; they get away from the game. Baseball needs more people to give back.” And now that he’s retired from the field, Boggs says he’ll have more time to hone his productive baseball swing into one more suited for the links at Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club in Florida, where he’s a member. As a twice-yearly golfer, the 12-time All-Star concedes, he makes a great third baseman. “I’m looking forward to actually getting a handicap,” he says. Another big change for Boggs will be his diet — no more chicken dinners before every game, a superstition throughout his career. He probably won’t eat chicken before a round of golf either: “Probably just a hot dog at the turn,” he says. — Will Pry

A CHAMPION OF CHARACTER
As founder and CEO of Athletic Resource Management Inc., Kyle Rote Jr. represents such high-caliber pro athletes he could hold a millennium version of the popular “Superstars” competition of the 1970s. (His sports agency counts Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Darrell Green, and Reggie White among its 70 clients.) Talk about a return to destiny, as Howard Cosell might have said. Rote once owned the Superstars event when he was a pro soccer player, winning three times over giants such as Roger Staubach, Julius Erving, Bobby Hull, Sugar Ray Leonard, and numerous Hall of Famers. Last year, that past glory prompted ESPN: The Magazine to name Rote “best athlete of the last 2,000 years.” “There’s a slight bit of justification [in ESPN’s choice], but a lot of it was tongue in cheek. But it was nice to be remembered by those folks,” Rote says. The son of a football superstar father, Rote grew up playing football, baseball, and basketball. But at age 16, he took up soccer to improve his pigskin agility, and as destiny would have it, ended up a superstar in American soccer. Today Rote and his wife, Mary Lynne, are members of the Crescent Club in Memphis, and they have four children. Rote’s busy schedule includes a weekly TV show, involvement with Special Olympics, and motivational speaking in which he encourages audiences nationwide to pursue their goals without forsaking their values. “Everyone can be a champion of something,” he says. “I tell people I’m a champion of sport who honors them for their achievements, especially in character, integrity, and excellence. In an era of outrageousness, being a champion of character still counts.” — Michelle Medley

ORDER ON THE COURT
For more than 25 years, Pat Summitt has been yell leader of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball program. In her second book, Raise the Roof, with Sally Jenkins, Summitt gives yell leading another meaning, that of helping young women with life lessons. “That’s what student athletes are learning in this program. How to assume responsibility for their own actions, how to work with other people. Dealing with success and failure. The adversity they experience here prepares them for life, because in life you will have adversity, and I think they’re better prepared for it having been exposed to it at this level,” says Summitt, a member of Club LeConte in Knoxville, Tennessee. Though the media has often shown her courtside in full rant, few could argue with the results: six national titles, three of them consecutive, and her team leads the nation in women’s attendance figures. Only two coaches have won more games. Heavily recruited as a motivational speaker, the former Olympian (co-captain of the 1976 U.S. women’s basketball silver-medalist team) shares the lessons she’s personally netted. “In order to be the best, you have to focus on the process and not the end result. You have to have the will to prepare to win. It’s not showing up on game day and saying, ‘We’re going to compete.’ It’s the preparation every day that constitutes winning and winners,” says Summitt, who knows whereof she speaks, albeit sometimes hoarsely, following yell practice. — Michelle Medley

A TASTE FOR BUSINESS
Joe Harris was never one to indulge in chocolate. In fact, he asserts, “I am not a dessert eater.” But here he is, at age 67, in his second year as president and founder of his own chocolate company. “I’m in the chocolate business,” he says, “but really what we make are marketing tools out of chocolate.” More specifically, his company, aptly named Chocolates for Business, makes chocolate business cards. These edible cards are packaged in a plastic case with the requested message or logo stamped on top, and accompanied by a printed paper card that can be saved for future reference long after the tasty candy has been devoured. Harris, a member of the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia, stumbled on the idea while working as a turnaround specialist, primarily for troubled small companies — one of which was a failing chocolate factory. Harris learned what not to do from its mistakes, and started his own company. He built a new 5,300-square-foot factory in Bristol, Pennsylvania, improved on the quality of the chocolate, and established a corporate client list topped by Ford, Boeing, Olive Garden, and Kodak. He also has found a hefty market in the wedding industry, providing a flavorful memento whose personalized plastic encasement will far outlast the customary wedding napkin, which is often marred by a smudge of, you guessed it, chocolate groom’s cake. — Louis Marroquin

THE REEL WORLD
Sunset Boulevard. Dr. Strangelove. Ivan the Terrible, parts I and II. If you’ve got prints of these films (not videocassettes, but actual prints), Dr. Ray Regis wants your number. Regis is film archivist for the North Carolina School of the Arts’ School of Filmmaking, the guardian of a collection so large that it’s second only to the Library of Congress’ holdings. Visualize 22,700 35-millimeter feature films, 8,000 trailers, and 1,500 live-action and animated short subjects, documentaries, newsreels, and commercials at one location. Brings to mind the massive warehouse in the closing scene of Citizen Kane. A member of the Piedmont Club in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Regis started his collection while growing up in the Boston area. By the time he and the school originated the archives in 1994, his personal holdings had grown to 3,500 features. “Films are important because we’re seeing performances that, had they not been captured at the pinnacle of the artists’ performances, would be lost forever,” says Regis, who has spent days cleaning a single film frame-by-frame and years sleuthing for rare prints. Even with all those films at his fingertips, Regis does have his preferences: Citizen Kane, The Third Man, and Hitchcock’s North by Northwest and Notorious among them. — Michelle Medley

COLLEGE PRIDE
The elite of the college tennis circuit convened once again for the Rolex National Intercollegiate Indoor Championships at Brookhaven Country Club near Dallas. Only the top 32 singles and 16-team doubles (men’s and women’s) players in collegiate tennis are invited to play in the 7-year-old tournament, making this one of the toughest, and most distinguished, events in the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA). Daniel Andersson, a senior at Virginia Commonwealth, won the men’s singles title. He defeated current NCAA champion Jeff Morrison in a match that took less than an hour to play. The Rolex title is Andersson’s second ITA Grand Slam title this year. Stanford freshman Laura Granville won the women’s singles event after converting on five of nine break opportunities. The Chicago native continued her school’s dominance in the event, becoming the third consecutive Stanford woman to capture the Rolex title. In doubles action, Michael Blue and Nick Crowell of the University of Texas won the men’s title; Claire Curran and Amy Jensen of the University of California took first in the women’s event. — Anne Clarrissimeaux

SOUTHERN HOSPITALITY
A visit to the University Center Club in Tallahassee, Florida, can be a very educational experience. Especially if you’re a student in the Florida State University department of hospitality administration. “The whole philosophy here is to be a laboratory for the students,” says club manager Jim Marsh, who allows the club to be used as a classroom for part of the hospitality curriculum. The program itself got a boost recently when The Robert and Nancy Dedman Foundation contributed $7 million to the College of Business. The Dedman Endowment in Hospitality, named for ClubCorp’s founder and his wife, will support the hospitality and professional golf management program by providing additions such as scholarships, resource development, and the latest hardware and software. Marsh, executive chef Rick Rothwell, and membership director Jean Garnette teach classes for the school, and the club employs many hospitality students. “It’s a win-win situation because it is a great opportunity for the students — and we, in turn, get committed employee partners,” Marsh says. Indeed, at last count more than 50 ClubCorp employee partners throughout the country (including Marsh) were graduates of FSU’s hospitality program. — Patty Jerde

VISION OF HOPE
Luckily, Reese Terry isn’t swayed by conventional wisdom. When Terry dedicated his career to launching a biomedical device that could reduce seizures in epilepsy patients, many people thought the idea crazy. Today, Terry is providing hope to millions of people who don’t respond to conventional medical treatment for the neurological condition. Terry, a member of Bay Oaks Country Club in Houston, is co-founder and chairman of Cyberonics Inc., which manufactures a small implanted device that delivers electrical stimulation directly to the brain via the vagus nerve. The Pulse Generator product has been hailed as the first new treatment approach for epilepsy in a century. The device, similar to a pacemaker, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 1997, but was nine years, $50 million, five clinical studies, and 450 patients in the making. Cyberonics is reviewing future applications of the device for use in the treatment of chronic depression, obesity, hypertension, headaches, pain, dementia, and sleeping disorders, Terry says. “It has been extremely rewarding to me and to everyone involved,” he says. “It is rare that you can do something to change someone’s life, and change it rather dramatically.” — Helen Bond

MAGIC MOMENTS
Pat Mateer, one of the top amateur golfers in San Diego, California, and a member of Shawdowridge Country Club, made jaws drop and set a new record when he scored a 59 on 18 holes at Palmilla in Los Cabos, Mexico. The 45-year-old scratch golfer was participating in the Taylor Made Champions Cup, an annual invitational event for Taylor Made business partners and advisory staff professionals. Mateer followed that accomplishment a few weeks later by setting another new record with a score of 64 at the El Dorado Golf Course, also in Los Cabos.

The inaugural 5K Fun Run & Walk at The Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia, raised $5,000 for the Bath County Christmas Mother Program. The program assists more than 100 needy families in the area each year during the holidays.

Twelve of the top-ranked tennis players in the 16- to 18-year-old boys and girls category hit the courts at the San Francisco Tennis Club for the Wilson Super Excellence Workouts, held in conjunction with Wilson Racquet Sports and the USTA’s Northern California section. The annual workouts began 15 years ago in Southern California to bring together the area’s top junior players for intensive practice prior to the national championships.

The Tower Club in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, was the site as the Greater Fort Lauderdale International Business Council welcomed the president of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo. President Jagdeo and a trade delegation from Guyana were on hand to discuss the mission of the IBC to maximize the economic benefits of international trade in the area by generating business opportunities, developing new jobs, increasing sales, and attracting targeted industries.

Three Associate Club golf shops were among the 53 selected from 2000 possible clubs as 1999 Regional PING Club Fitter of the Year. The winners were Alan Johnson and his staff at Canyon Creek Country Club near Dallas; Joe Zinchini and the golf operations staff at Diamond Run Golf Club near Pittsburgh; and Jimmy Tidwell and his staff at Woodside Plantation Country Club in Aiken, South Carolina…. Golf Shop Operations, the country’s oldest golf trade publication, named the golf shops at Pinehurst in North Carolina, Gainey Ranch Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, and affiliate resort The Wigwam in Phoenix, Arizona, to its annual list of “America’s 100 Best Golf Shops.” … Ernie Dunlevie, a founding director of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic and an honorary member of  Indian Wells Country Club near Palm Springs, California, was inducted into the Classic Hall of Fame. He was recognized for his “numerous and generous contributions of time, energy, and personal donations to help perpetuate the charities of the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic.” … For the second consecutive year, The Virginia Waterfront International Arts Festival, under the direction of Robert W. Cross, a member of Town Point Club in Norfolk, Virginia, was named one of the top 20 events in the region by the Southeast Tourism Society. The festival also was named one of the top 100 events in North America by the American Bus Association, the trade organization of the motor coach industry. This year’s festival, a 25-day event showcasing a diversity of music and dance by international performers, runs through May 21 at venues within a 50-mile region of coastal Virginia.... Bo Shafer, a member of Club LeConte in Knoxville, Tennessee, was elected International President of Kiwanis International for 2000-2001. A life member of Kiwanis, Shafer has been a major force in the organization both internationally and locally for almost 40 years.