Kevin Scarbinsky
President David Lee welcomed members and guests to the third Gulf Coast Athletics Club meeting for 2016-2017, with our guest speaker, Kevin Scarbinsky with the Alabama Media Group and al.com.
Guests were introduced, including the parents of our scholar/athletes. President Lee then gave the club an update on the inaugural weeks of the Office Football Pool. The pack is currently led by some picker named Shug Jordan AKA the Mayor.
Coach Owen Corcoran with Gulf Shores High School gave an update. Football continues to show progress, but results thus far have been less than expected. However, he said there’s more to life than winning. Volleyball and cross country have begun and doing well.
Membership Chairman reported that we had 103 members last year at year end, and have 100 members on the rolls as of this evening.
Dec McClelland led the Crying Towel presentation and Team Reports. After scaring the LSU and Georgia fans with veiled threats, Dec did the unimaginable as the Crying Towel was awarded to his team, the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, for its loss to Duke. He then stated that would never happen again.
We were honored to have our first scholar-athletes from GSHS with us. Tristen Fitts is a senior at Gulf Shores High, a young lady with a 4.3 GPA and 28 ACT. She is involved with track, volleyball, and softball, also very involved in her church and the community, and wants to attend Auburn for a career in orthodontics. Grey Loper also is a senior and plays on the football team, serving as its captain. He also wishes to enter the medical field and intends to attend South Alabama, and may play football there.
Our Guest Speaker was Kevin Scarbinsky, originally from Pennsylvania, who graduated with a Masters in Journalism from Florida. He worked 30 years in the newspaper business with the Birmingham News and lamented America’s newspapers are going away.
His comments were a reflection on the stories and games he has covered, most recently, the Auburn “last second” win over LSU, now known as the Six Kicks, and the firing of LSU Coach Les Miles. He noted Les always had a problem telling time. He also stated that, since Nick Saban came to Alabama, all other SEC schools have changed coaches at least once.
Kevin loves college sports and described himself as a bit cynical and writes “snarky” comments! He concluded his extremely interesting remarks with answers to some hot questions from the audience.
