“The Positive Place for Kids.”

That is what the sign inside the Boys & Girls Club of Santa Maria Valley proclaims, and that is exactly what this organization is.

Every time I've been in there during a summer day, the place has been bursting with activity and smiling kids.

“We probably had about 160 kids today,” said Boys & Girls Club Athletic Director Chuy Frausto one day this week. “That's pretty typical of what we get in the summer. We're pretty busy.”

The Club has a teen room, game room, library, an arts and crafts room, a gymnasium, various game equipment - in short, something for just about everybody.

The hours are plentiful - in the summers from 7 a.m.-12 p.m. for those in the Club's summer Early Bird Program, from 12-6 p.m. for those who are not. The Club is open from 2-6 p.m. during the school year. It's open Mondays through Fridays.

With such a low membership cost - $20 dollars a year, though that varies if youngsters play Club team sports - I would guess that you won't find a more inclusive club around. It's open for kids ages six-through-18.

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It's a good place for kids to fill summer days, and the membership cost is low enough that youngsters who may not come from the most ideal socio-economic backgrounds can be included.

Frausto was a three-sport athlete at Santa Maria High School who came home and caught on at the Club in 2006. Bill Libbon was the club's Executive Director when Frausto came to the Club as a kid. He's still the Executive Director, 33 years strong at the post now.

Workers such as Julie Matuita keep the Club humming, Frausto said. “She's in the arts and crafts room, and she's always got something going in there.”

Take a tour of the Club, and the place's history strikes you. There are 29 retired “jerseys” on the gym's wall, including those of such Club legends as Gilbert Velasco, Matt Cova and Andrew Lopez. Fifty six Club traveling basketball teams are memorialized on a gym wall. John Thomas, a former Righetti High School pitching star whom the San Francisco Giants organization eventually drafted, is one of the names listed on one of those honored traveling teams. Peter Brumana, a long-time administrative assistant for the Hancock College football program, has a place on the gym's wall of honor as an honored coach.

There is a special memorial on a gym wall for Club member Andrew Guzman who won a national wrestling championship in 1996. “I went to school with him and his brother Anthony,” said Frausto. “They're twins. They were sophomores when I was a senior.”

There are plaques on a wall honoring various community members who have passed on. Every year people are eligible to have their name engraved under those honorees for winning the Joe Luis “Cruiser” Evangelista Youth of the Year award; the Joel Maratas Memorial Game Room Award; the Mr. and Mrs. James P. Lapp annual Arts and Crafts Award; the Gilbert Regalado Memorial Staff Award; the Johnny L. “Fonz” Trujillo Volunteer of the Year Award; the Kathryn Noriega Student of the Year Memorial Award; the Johnny and Zachary Schwark Memorial Sportsmanship Award; and the Charles “M” Chuck Estrada Memorial Physical Award.

“That's me,” Frausto said, pointing to the “Jesus Frausto 1997” engraving for the Charles “M” Chuck Estrada Memorial Physical Award.

I can't think of an organization more worthy of community support.

The Club isn't above a little needling, though.

One passage on a gym wall reads “WINNING ISN'T EVERYTHING. CHARACTER BUILDING IS.” (Caps the Club's).

Another? It reads “All Good Coaches Coach. All Bad Coaches Referee.”

Exiting the Club and segueing to a less uplifting saga....

I was out of town last week when I read Los Angeles Times columnist Helene Elliott's account of the July 22 brawl between the WNBA's Los Angeles Sparks and Detroit Shock. The headline above her column read “All of sudden (sic), WNBA has a fighting chance.”

Elliott wrote that brawling is never good, but that the July 22 fight might be the best thing that ever happened to the WNBA. And not just because game footage was all over the TV news or because the incident drew 250,000 YouTube views before the next day was close to over “though that kind of exposure is priceless.”

She wrote that the incident “forces us to think about the way we perceive female athletes - and the way female athletes perceive themselves....the Sparks and Shock displayed the raw passion that's usually ascribed only to men.”

I agree with her assertion that Rick Mahorn, the 6-foot-9 inch, 300-pound former Detroit Piston who now coaches the Shock should have been suspended at least a dozen games (he was eventually suspended for two) for pushing the Sparks' Lisa Leslie during the melee. Leslie was knocked to the court.

Some of the rest of Elliott's reasoning I have a problem with.

Playing tough, in-your-face defense shows passion. Going up hard among banging bodies for a rebound shows passion. Leading the fast break shows passion. Looking for the ball for that shot with the game on the line - or passing off to a teammate who has a better look in the same situation - shows passion.

Brawling is, well, brawling.

Two hundred fifty thousand viewings on YouTube by midday the next day doesn't change that.

Kenny Cress is a sports writer for the Times. He can be reached at (805) 739-2237 or at kcress@santamariatimes.com.

August 1, 2008