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Hello and welcome to Focus on OLLI. What is OLLI? OLLI is a program at UNLV dedicated to active retired or semi-retired individuals who understand the importance of keeping themselves engaged. OLLI is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Every month this program will dig into favorite classes, interesting teachers and members as well as special events offered through OLLI.
Speaker 1 0:00
This is a k, U, N, V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Keith McMillen 0:16
Hello and welcome to focus on Olli. Olli is a program at UNLV, dedicated to retired or semi retired individuals who remain engaged and active in civic activities and lifelong learning. Olli is the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNLV. Olli is made possible by support from the Bernard Osher Foundation, established by philanthropists Bernard and Barbara Osher with a mission to support lifelong learning, higher education and the arts. This series is designed to give you an in depth look at the Olli program and encourage you to join in the fun. Well,
Ed Ort 0:55
hello, I'm Ed Ort. I'm a student as well as an instructor at Olli. I want to welcome you to today's Olli podcast. You know, over time, Olli has offered classes on a wide variety of topics, ranging anywhere from art appreciation to believe they're not ukulele workshops. But did you know that Olli also offers sports related as well as fitness related classes? So today we're going to talk about some of those sports and fitness classes and the instructors who lead them. Our guests today are Doug verb, someone who has a lot of experience in the business side of sports and leads classes at Olli on that topic. Also Esther shube And Ann Mason, who are our instructors for our Pickleball 55 and over sessions and Ollie at UNLV program manager, Beth Davis, will be leading a class this fall called speak to the sport, where various Las Vegas sports team executives and coaches will speak about their jobs and offer their perspectives. So let's start with Doug. Doug. Vert Doug, tell us about your sports biz class and what got you interested in leading
Doug Verb 2:03
it? Well, I wasn't able to get into the ukulele class. Sold out every semester, didn't I tried to pull some strings, but I couldn't, so I started in strings. Literally, right? Literally, yes, yes. So somebody said you should teach a class. And I said, Well, who cares about the business of sports? Who really wants to hear that? They want to talk about the games and what happens and all of that? But he convinced me to do it. I did, and now I think it's 13 or 14 semesters later, and this summer semester, we have 70 people in a hybrid class. Some are on Zoom, and some come in person, and I still don't understand why any of them show up to hear me blather on about the business of sports and all the millions of zeros that go with everything that I talk about.
Ed Ort 2:59
Well, what do you enjoy about the class? I'm sure the people who come enjoy it. I know I've taken your class and really enjoyed it, but what do you enjoy about the class? Well,
Doug Verb 3:08
I think it is. I kid about the people that, you know, they should get a life and all they to come, but I really enjoy them, and I enjoy the interaction that we have after the class. And sometimes they'll, you know, people will write to me and ask me different questions or different ideas to talk about, and it just really gives me an opportunity to talk to people about the sports business. It's the only thing I've ever done, maybe the only thing I know about, and I spent over 40 years in the business and was just absolutely blessed to do just about everything in the sports business except be an agent. I've never wanted to and I have instructions to take out a gun and shoot me if I even suggest it. But everything else I've been able to do, and it's been great, and I never worked a day in my life.
Ed Ort 4:00
So tell us a little bit more about how your background in you know, these various things related to the sports business applies to the class. How do you use that in terms of what you cover in the class? Well,
Doug Verb 4:13
I just, what I do is, every week, I just basically look at the news, find out what's happening. There's certain themes that continue. Obviously, I I concentrate on the local pro teams now and UNLV and what the impacts are, and it's just everything I've done in my history, in my career, relate to what it is now, just, there's just a lot more zeros now, meaning millions more dollars. So it's, it's great, I look at it, and it's just more of everything happening, especially here in Vegas, when I got here 21 years ago, there were no no sports at all. And now, as you know, we have quite a lot and more coming.
Ed Ort 4:58
Yeah, yeah. It's. Really amazing. In fact, I'd like to ask you a question about that. You know, we've got professional sports themes, literally in all the major sports. We've got sports team and football. We've got the Raiders. We've got a hockey team, the Golden Knights. We've got basketball. We've got the aces. Baseball is coming soon with the A's, and there's even been talk of a professional men's basketball team perhaps coming here. What? What's the reason? What is attracting major sports teams to the Las Vegas area?
Doug Verb 5:33
I think it all changed when the pro leagues accepted the idea of gambling, gaming for it, and they accepted it because they're now because of technology. There was a way to make money at it. Before you could only bet on sports legally in Las Vegas. Now you can bet pretty much all over the country because of technology. So once that happened, that allowed the technology companies to go to the leagues and offer sponsorship for that, so there was more money. So all of a sudden, the thing that was so taboo was welcome in. And of course, this being, you know, a place for that. We started with hockey, which was a big question mark, hockey in the desert. Who would have thought that worked, but the organization did everything really well, and they won on the ice. And then when the NFL brought the raiders here, that was a big thing. And it's, it's just grown as the population has grown. I think we're like a 2.5 million people now. So there's enough people, and there's, of course, the 300 400,000 people that come in, 300,000 people that come in every weekend and do come in for games. That's just one more reason to come. So that's why it's working. And yeah, I think we'll have an NBA team. They're going to discuss expansion here in July, when all the owners meet here, and I think there's a pretty good chance the A's will show up, despite everything that they do to make it difficult to show up, but I think we'll, and it'll continue to grow. You know, we also have an arena football team. We have a indoor lacrosse team. We have a pro soccer team. There's a lot a lot more. We have a volleyball team, yeah, we have a cornhole team,
Beth Davis 7:27
right? Pickleball? Do we have pickleball? Yeah?
Ed Ort 7:31
Well, who would have thunk it? Las Vegas, the mecca of sports. Yeah, you mentioned pickleball Beth, and that gets us to our Pickleball instructors, Esther Shub and Ann Mason. So I'd like to first ask you, maybe this goes to Esther, what got you interested in teaching people about playing pickleball?
Esther Schube 7:53
Well, I've always been competitive myself, and I played sports when I was younger. There wasn't too many things growing up to play, but as an adult, I started playing softball. Aged out of that a little bit about 60, and after I broke a finger, and then I moved to a community where they had pickleball, and I said, Oh, I can do this. I played badminton in college, a little tennis, and I thought, Oh, this would be something fun to do. And it was, and you immediately get hooked. I mean, it's just something that you either love it or hate it, and almost everybody loves it, and you play it, and you go back for more, and you make friends and you laugh and you have fun and you get a little exercise. And
Ed Ort 8:34
great. Well, believe it or not, there may be some people out there who don't know what Pickleball is. Could you kind of maybe, Anne, you could handle this one. What? Just give us a brief what is pickleball. You know, I always make the joke told to my grandkids is, where do they get all the pickles? But I don't think that's what Pickleball
Anne Mason 8:53
is. Yeah, there's not a pickle to be found. It's kind of a combination hybrid of tennis, badminton and ping pong. The paddle you use a paddle, not a racket. The paddle is similar, but larger than a ping pong paddle. The court is similar to tennis, but, oh, gosh, probably less than half the size and and then the ball is a wiffle ball, so you're getting the same kind of motion, similar to the badminton. And generally you play doubles, so that there's not so much ground to cover. And yeah, it's, it's just a great way to build camaraderie and make friends. And, you know, you have all different levels of competitiveness. You know, some people are out there just for fun, some people are really trying to win and and it's there's something there for everyone. Yeah. So
Ed Ort 9:53
if someone is interested in in joining your sessions and playing pickleball, what do they need? What kind of equipment and where do you hold these sessions? I've
Esther Schube 10:03
been fortunate enough to get an indoor facility through the county paradise recreational center, and we have three courts set up, and therefore we don't have to worry about the elements, the most important thing in pickleball is having the appropriate shoes. I will not let anybody play with me if they don't have tennis tennis shoes or pickleball shoes. It really keeps somebody from hurting themselves, from twisting an ankle, from hurting a knee. It's been very effective for me to do that cut down on injuries, and if they want to play. I'm not offering beginning lessons anymore because it has been so popular. I offered two workshops this summer with Ann, and we taught last year. We have a waiting list to get in our class, so therefore only advanced beginners or intermediate people can come and play men and women, and we play 11 point games, which is pretty standard. It can last anywhere from five minutes to 20 it just depends on you have to win by two points. Okay, so,
Ed Ort 11:23
so I'm going to ask you a similar question to when I asked regarding popularity, what? What is making pickleball so popular? I mean, I see it being played everywhere, even in my development, they've taken some of the tennis courts and converted them to pickleball courts.
Esther Schube 11:40
It's much less strenuous on a senior citizens body, and that's why a lot of you'll see a lot of neighborhoods doing that. However, the young people have taken it over, and it's much harder for seniors to get courts. Fortunately, they often don't work during the day and they can play during the day. The 55 and older communities have courts. That's where I learned to play. That's where I do play. And I believe you have the similar situation,
Anne Mason 12:07
yeah, we have courts in my neighborhood, but also with the rec centers, they will designate certain times for either beginning or beginners or seniors or, you know, different different levels of competition. So you can usually find someplace to play where you're comfortable with that level of play.
Ed Ort 12:30
Talking about seniors playing pickleball, what do you say to somebody who's who says to you, Well, I'm interested, but I think I'm too old to play pickleball.
Anne Mason 12:41
You're never too old. If you can walk around, you can play. I mean, the people that I normally play with in my neighborhood, you know, we have people who can run all over the place and people who barely move. And of course, if you put those two together, the person who's running around is really running around. But yeah, I mean, you can, you can gear the play amongst the people you're playing with. The
Esther Schube 13:10
oldest person in our Olli class is about 81 and I myself have said I'm 77
Ed Ort 13:17
Yeah, so it sounds like you're pretty much never too old to play
Esther Schube 13:21
pickleball. That's right, playing helps keep you young. Yeah,
Ed Ort 13:25
good, good answer. So, Ann, earlier you would, you would kind of touched on the social aspect of pickleball. Clearly, you know, this is more than just keeping fit. I mean, there's obviously a social aspect to it. Talk about that.
Anne Mason 13:43
Yeah, so when I first started playing, somebody in my neighborhood invited me to come out and play, and since then, I've been playing for about three years. I had met all kinds of people in my neighborhood, you know, some, you know, we've become pretty good friends. We go out to lunch occasionally, you know, just do different social things. And, and we're always encouraging other people, especially when we come across new people to the community, you know, we'll say, oh, you know, if you're interested in pickleball, because we're very open to new players, you know, helping teach them how to play and keep score. That's the hardest part. And, yeah, just really forming nice friendships among among all different people.
Ed Ort 14:26
Wonderful. But again, it sounds like if you want to join these pickle ball sessions, sign up early, because there is a waiting list. Yes. Okay, on to Beth. Thank you so much, Beth. I know you've got some really excellent speakers, and you're a speak to the sport class. Could you talk about some of them? I do,
Beth Davis 14:47
and I will. I'm very excited to bring in a couple of individuals from UNLV. One is Eric Harper, who's our athletic director, and one is the new Running Rebels head basketball. Coach, so that'll be fun. We have Steve Stallworth coming he is the head of the Equestrian Center at the south point, so he's going to talk a little bit about what it takes to run that whole area. I have David Dwyer coming in. He's with the he's the COO for Las Vegas desert dogs, the La Crosse team here, and Bob Fishman, who some of you are sitting around this table might know, including you Ed, he is an instructor at Olli. He does a number of classes for us, but what you may not know is he opened the first Aloha Stadium in Hawaii, and he was responsible for taking the Pro Bowl to and bringing that to the Aloha Stadium. So he'll be speaking, and my opener is Kiva Martinez, who's the Senior Vice President and Chief Sales Officer with the Raiders. Wow. So I'm excited to
Ed Ort 15:56
have her exciting class. What? What stimulated the class?
Beth Davis 16:00
So both my parents were in education. My dad was a high school basketball coach back in Ohio, so I grew up around the gym. I grew up around sports my whole life. Have a love for sports. If anybody comes to my office, they see my Bengals, my VgK and my rebels, so yes, and the aces and the and the lady rebels, a little bit of everything. But I've always kind of been around sports. I realized that I actually had built up quite a few contacts within the sports community, and I wanted to expand our campus and community speaker series. We have a speaker series every day of the week at Olli, which is kind of exciting, which ranges from soap box on current events to professor's choice, where we have professors coming in, and there was a lot of demand. Doug was really the only sports class other than a couple, I think Ed you threw your hat in one time and maybe somebody else. And there's a lot of people that are really, really interested in sports, especially with the growth, which I know, you know, Doug's covering a lot of the business end of and I think this was a fun way to just bring in the speakers and bring in some people, and some areas that you know people don't know about aren't on the every day.
Ed Ort 17:16
Yeah, actually, one of the other interesting things regarding sports and Ollie at UNLV is, I guess, for the last few years, we have had a trip to allegiance stadium, bringing some of our Olli members to a UNLV football game. Could you talk about our upcoming
Beth Davis 17:37
one? Very exciting, which this will probably air after, but we'll let you know that we are excited. So good reason to join Ollie and come with us. We because we'll do another one next year. We are going to the home opener against UCLA, which is quite exciting for the new rebels coach. Team supposed to be good as everybody followed last year. I'm sure we had a really, really successful season, successful team, and I've heard that we're going to be better this year. Dan
Ed Ort 18:08
Mullen is a very successful coach, so I'd like to open it up to all of you. You know, I have been an instructor as well as a student at Olli, and it never fails, no matter what class I'm teaching, I always learn something from my students. Fact, I probably learn a lot more than maybe they learn from me. I'd like your viewpoint on that. Have have you, in the course of your classes, learned something you didn't know from your students? How about you? Doug,
Doug Verb 18:41
it seems that every class, someone will ask a question that I'm just not aware of. It stumps me. Luckily, I always hear the music in my head, and I'm able to dance my way through it. So basically, I just make up something. And now the truth is that I do, of course, they always ask questions. And the thing about any business, but certainly sports, is that there's 1000 different ways of doing something. And I get the type of question, well, why are they doing this this way? And it's usually, it's just that's the way it's been set up. That's the way it's been done. But I can't think of a particular instance as somebody asked me something, but I know that there's always a class, and what I try to do is remember what the question is, put it in my recap that I send out every week, or open up a new topic the next week and discuss it and make it you know a little fuller.
Ed Ort 19:45
Esther and Ann, how about you? I'm sure things come up during your pickball sessions where people ask you, like, why are you doing this? Or maybe bring up something you didn't know about.
Anne Mason 19:57
Well, actually, one of our students. Was mentioned to me about the hiking club, and I didn't know about that. And so I actually went on a couple hikes with those, with those folks, and that was pretty interesting, because it was in areas of Las Vegas I had, I had never been to,
Beth Davis 20:17
yep, and if anybody out there is hearing this and they want to take over that hiking club or an we are looking for someone to do that, because there's a lot of interest for people to do that. We do that as a shared interest group, and it's open to anybody to come and go, but we're looking for somebody to coordinate it, because we'd like to keep that going.
Ed Ort 20:39
Yeah, so you know, you've probably already gotten a sense of the variety of kind of sports related things that we do, you know, anywhere from sports business to actually playing pickleball to hiking club. You know, just to point up another thing Beth had earlier mentioned that I had thrown my hat in the ring, and when she was referring to is that a number of semesters ago, I led a class on sports and society, where we looked at the societal aspects of sports. For instance, you know how various countries use sports to foster nationalism. We see that in the Olympics house, sports has been a platform for social activism. So it just gives you an idea that you know, if you come to ollie, you'll you'll be exposed to many different things related to the topic of sports. And of course, sports is not the only thing with cover Ollie, we cover a wide variety of things. Another thing I would like to ask the group is, I know one of the things I've enjoyed in your class Doug is humor. Your class is not only interesting, but I find it fun, is that something you purposely kind of feed into your class, and I'd like the other instructors to talk about that too.
Doug Verb 22:07
Well, I think I always try to remember that sports are fun. They're not that serious. They're very, very serious, but they're really not that that serious. It's not brain surgery, it's not open heart surgery. And so I, I see the humor in a lot of things, and especially the way different operations work. So yeah, it's, it's got to be fun. Otherwise it's me standing up there for 100 minutes just talking about, oh, that's what I did today. That's right, but it, you know, I have to keep it fun, and I try to find videos or cartoons or something to instill, you know, to instill a little bit of laughter and basically, to wake up half the group, right? Yes,
Beth Davis 22:58
I think it's your personality, though, and your passion for it that comes through. And I think that's what's so key to our Olli instructors in our program, is the students will come if they feel that you have not only the knowledge, but the passion and that comes through.
Ed Ort 23:16
The other aspect of fun, in my mind, is Olli is not like going to high school. There are no grades, there's no homework. You're there to learn, but you're also there to have fun. You're also there to socialize. So it's, it's really a pleasant experience. So it's not, it's not like when you were back in high school. How about you Anne and Esther? How about you know, I'm sure that fun has a presence in your pickleball sessions.
Esther Schube 23:47
I try very hard to get everybody to laugh every time, usually with self deprecating mistakes that I have made, so that they can learn from my mistakes. I do give homework, though they have to stretch, they have to hit balls against the wall, and they have to practice a little bit so that they can function out there. So I do give a little homework, but they seem to enjoy it. And speaking of which, they have sought out other avenues to play. And many of the people in my class I'm not teaching this summer are playing this summer with each other. And so that has been really valuable, yeah.
Ed Ort 24:33
And did you want to add something to that?
Anne Mason 24:36
Not, not really, but, um, yeah. So the students have have been able to find like levels of play with each other and and, yeah, have have sought out different rec centers in and around where they're living.
Ed Ort 24:52
Yeah. So Beth, you wear multiple hats. You are not only leading this class coming. Up in the fall, you are the Olli at UNLV program manager. You know, one of the things I know that that has been evolving at Olli at UNLV is the growing number of hybrid classes, where you could take a class in person, you could show up in the classroom, or you can log in on the internet and join that way? Is this something we are planning to do more in the future?
Beth Davis 25:23
Definitely. We're working through those little quirks and issues that you know come up, but it's going well. We have three hybrid classrooms. We have 14 scheduled, 14 hybrid classes scheduled for fall. So pretty amazing. It's a great way for ollie to have a little bit of growth without looking for a third parking lot, right? But, yeah, it's a nice way too, for those people that just aren't driving around town right now for whatever reason, whether it be traffic, they're not able to a health reason, it's a way for them to take some of those really popular classes that haven't they haven't been able to and if they're not coming in person, are
Ed Ort 26:05
there any other things that that you are looking at in the future as improvements at all we do an MV
Beth Davis 26:14
I really think that we're really we're really doing well. I think we have 103 classes for fall, and they're really, really good classes, wide variety of topics. We have seven satellites. We'll continue to look for satellite locations again for the same reason, so those people that maybe aren't driving or unable to commit to coming in can still take Olli classes. So we'll continue to look to keep growing, but maybe, maybe would be an area where we work with some other ollies. We have one class that we started this last time, that it's UNLV and Oklahoma State, and that one's just a virtual class, but it's continuing again in the fall, so that's kind of fun. Gives us a chance to to reach across, reach across those state, state borders, and, you know, get to know some other people. So maybe, maybe that area,
Ed Ort 27:08
yeah, sounds terribly what was the class? Beth?
Esther Schube 27:11
It was great
Beth Davis 27:13
voyages. It's based on a great course history's greatest voyages, I think, is the title. So, yeah, they're doing it Tuesdays, I believe, at 232
Ed Ort 27:23
30 to 415 so it's about the A's baseball team who started in Philadelphia and came to Kansas City. That's a great so I have one last question to all of you, and that is, if someone listening has an interest in perhaps leading a class, what would you say to encourage them? What's what's the real benefit of leading a class at Olli, what do you get out of it? Let's start with you. Doug,
Doug Verb 27:54
as I said, before I get a chance to talk about something that you know, a passion, a love that I've had since I was a kid and and yet other people excited about it, maybe new found interests. I'm amazed that half of my class are women, and many of them come up to me and say, My husband would bring me to a baseball game, or my husband never described and got into this the way that you do and all that they also bring cake and cookies, and that's nice, but I think it's just to be really to be able to share and show your passion. I mean, every class I've taken it's the same thing. You can tell that the instructor has a true passion for for what we're doing.
Ed Ort 28:48
I think we're going to end it on that. This session has gone very, very quickly. I really want to thank our guests today, Doug, Esther, Ann and Beth and I especially want to thank all of you out there for listening.
Keith McMillen 29:06
Thanks for listening. To focus on Olli. There are several ways to get more information. Our web address is Olli, o l, l, i.unlv.edu You may also email us at Olli, at UNLV, that's Ollie, O, L, L, I, A, T, U, n, l, V, at sign unlv.edu. You can also just give us a call at 702-895-3394. Monday through Friday, between the hours of eight and five. Except, of course on university holidays, I.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai