Sports & Recreation

Soccer: Basic equipment list

If you compare soccer to most other popular sports, it requires the least amount of equipment. At its most basic requirement, all you need is soccer footwear. For the typical soccer game, a player will need a very small list of items. Here is a head-to-toe rundown of basic gear from Soccer Garage:

Jersey

A jersey can be made from any fabric that fits loosely and is comfortable. However, most jerseys on sale are made from special wicking fabric that keeps a player dry during a game. There is a slight difference between jerseys for male and female players.

Shorts

When it comes to shorts, anything goes just as long as it does not fall below the knee like in Basketball. Over the years we have seen everything from baggy shorts to running style shorts. The only real rule here is to keep it as comfortable and something that allows freedom of movement.

Sock

The socks should protect your feet from the friction with the cleats and extend high enough to cover the shin guards. You can use special fabric ties to keep the socks up if they keep falling.

Shin guards

Although you can play soccer with just footwear, the most important item for the physical safety of the player are the shin guards. High impact tussling for the ball can cause some serious damage without the guards.

Gloves

Players need field gloves during the cold weather games.

Headgear

Headgear is not a standard part of the kit but is more commonplace now to avoid head injuries from constantly heading the ball.

The Top 5 Elements that Make a Challenging and Interesting Course

Aside from the financial aspect of the business, the maintenance and design of a course requires precise planning. If you want to know what makes a course challenging and interesting, read on for tips from the pros.

Green Speeds

When a golfer hits a putt, green speeds determine how fast the ball travels. In order to maintain green speeds, special turf equipment is used with blades designed to cut grass closer to the earth.

Conditioning

If a course is in an area that experiences extreme weather, special care must be taken to ensure the soil does not succumb to the elements. Over fertilized fairways may require a rough mower to be trimmed to regulation height.

Skill Level

An interesting course caters to all skill levels with holes designed to test golfers. Courses that encourage a diverse usage of clubs, for instance, can help add some variety to the game. Water holes add challenge, and a bit of frustration for the amateur, but are generally great additions.

Length

The length of a course will challenge golfers to make specific shots. A round should last about four hours, with holes ranging from par-3 to par-5. There are exceptions to the rule, but a great course has a fairway that will take a golfer two to three shots to set up for a two putt finish.

Aesthetics

The thirteenth hole in Augusta is flanked by brightly colored azaleas in bloom during the masters, while the third hole of Mauna Kea in Hawaii sits ocean side. Those picturesque venues give credence to the famous phrase from Mark Twain: golf is a good walk ruined.

Author Bio: This post is sponsored by Global Turf Equipment, vendors of turf maintenance equipment for more than 80 countries worldwide. Global Turf sells used and refurbished turf sprayer equipment at an affordable price from its 35,000 square foot show room in San Antonio, Florida.

Radar Guns and Sports: The Marriage of Science and Athletics

We all, have at one point or another, discovered the surprising accuracy of radar guns. Many folks have unfortunately found themselves in the position of paying a traffic ticket due to the irrefutable results of one of these devices. They have become a standard with law enforcement and are utilized all over the world for their precise measurements. However, this same technology can also be found in another industry. Very few people consider the applications with sports as well. Who would think that this technology could be applied in radar guns for baseball.

Sports are an investment, from the college to the professional level. Millions of dollars are used to get and maintain reliable equipment, training techniques, and for the acquisition of powerful athletes. Considering the accuracy of radar devices, it isn’t surprising that it can also be used to train players to better heights of perfection. In fact, there are some companies who specialize in radar devices designed for sports application, with the JUGS radar gun being the top of the food chain.

You’ve invested time and money into your athletes and equipment. For training purposes, these devices can help maintain and grow your investment. Before radar there was no way to accurately measure the speed of a ball. Our eyes are crude measuring instruments that cannot judge speeds with any type of precision. However, the modern radar gun can display the speed of a moving object by comparing a reflected shift measurement using the Doppler effect. And while this may sound complicated, it is actually simple and produces amazing results.

There are a wide range of prices available, starting at the low hundreds and reaching into the thousands. However, the less expensive devices can only be applicable to a short width of movement. For a more expansive range, like the inside of a sports arena or field, we recommend a the larger investment. Not only can this be used as a training device but it’s results can also be utilized to share information with the spectator. For those fans that are obsessed with stats, this can be another facet in their appreciation and knowledge. Sports are a spectator driven industry and anything you can do to improve the quality of their experience should be considered.

Though we have mentioned baseball, radar devices can also effect the entire spectrum of sports, from racing to hockey, from football to cricket. As much as we mentioned that radar guns have become a standard of law enforcement, the sports world is also beginning to reap the benefits of these amazing devices. One more time, this is your investment. You should get the most out of it.

How to Clean Uniforms the Proper Way

Cleaning uniforms might seem like an obvious thing, but there are actually some very specific rules to follow.  Every type of uniform including girl’s softball pants and boy’s basketball jerseys, need to be taken care of and cleaned regularly.  Uniforms are much more likely to last a long time if given the proper care and attention.

The reason that it’s so important to clean uniforms correctly is that uniforms help to create the image of a team.  Uniforms are powerful symbols that allow a team to be easily recognized.  Fans and supporters form a connection and an attachment to the team’s uniforms; It doesn’t matter whether it’s a professional team or a local children’s team.  If a uniform begins smelling funny or the color fades and changes, it can frustrate fans and cause confusion.

Many uniforms such as softball pants are made to be stain resistant today.  This can help to lessen the occurrence of stains.  Also, the majority of uniforms are made from easy-to-clean materials such as polyester.  Polyester is a synthetic material which makes it one of the simplest materials to clean.  Polyester is also built to last and can hold up against the test of time.

It’s best to presoak a uniform before washing it.  You can use a utility sink to get out as much of the mud, loose dirt, grass, and sweat as possible (depending on the sport).  You can also simply spray it with a house prior to washing it.  Then you can fill a sink or bucket with warm water.  The water shouldn’t be hot.  Next, you want to add some heavy duty laundry detergent and a cup of baking soda if you have it.  The uniform should soak for an hour or overnight if possible.

When you wash your uniforms at home, it’s important to use a high-quality detergent that will help the uniform keep its color.  The first time you wash your uniform, it’s a good idea to wash each garment separately in cold water so that the colors don’t bleed onto each other.  After the first wash, you can wash it normally in the machine.  However, it should be washed alone without other garments.

It’s a good idea to avoid bleach because it often strips color and it can leave ugly white spots.  It can also damage the fabric.  You should also avoid fabric softener and dry cleaning.  Both can damage the uniform and can actually create stains on the garment.

Leading Products in Greenskeeping

Author bio: Guest post is provided by Global Turf Equipment, a leading name in utility vehicles such as the top dresser.  Browse their website for more information.

Maintaining a lawn or a stadium field can be quite a hefty job.  For this reason, it’s important to have the proper utility equipment such as a turf sweeper and a riding mower.  This blog will explain the various equipment that you need in order to maintain the perfect lawn.

1) riding mower: Long gone are the days of pushing around a heavy push mower.  Today, those who are passionate about greenskeeping are using riding mowers.  Riding mowers are very easy to use and don’t require too much strain.  Riding mowers run like a normal car.  You simple use a pedal to move it around the lawn.

2) turf sweeper: Turf sweepers are nifty pieces of equipment that allow you to pick up grass, leaves, twigs, and other debris on your lawn.  Turf sweepers can easily be towed by other yard equipment such as tractors and riding mowers.

3) turf sprayer: Turf sprayers bring convenience into your life.  These units are designed to hold chemicals that you need in order to perform landscaping of any kind.  Turf sprayers can hold products such as fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides.

These various types of turf equipment come in all different sizes and horsepower.  All of these pieces of utility equipment can help you to achieve the perfect lawn in the most convenient ways possible.  While you may need to invest in the equipment up-front, the added ease may end up being well worth the cost.

Giving my Lawn that Sports Field Look

Sports and summer go hand in hand. I can remember many days of my youth in Dodger stadium. And there are certain smells that bring me back to those days. Salted peanuts and beer, leather from the mitt I wore every time in case a stray ball went into the stands, and of course, the scent of freshly cut grass. Now when I was younger, I just accepted the idea that the field grass would have that perfect shade of green. Being a homeowner, I’ve unfortunately discovered that to maintain a thriving lawn is the work of miracles. Greenskeeping wasn’t my forte when it came to my own yard. And so I began to wonder how a golf course or sports field was kept in pristine shape. In addition, how could I apply this to my own lawn to help it look healthy?

Being just a simple homeowner, I wasn’t about to invest in a club car carryall or any other expensive equipment. I mean, I just had my two yards to maintain. I’m one of those individuals that would water my lawn like crazy, even to the point of adversely affecting my water bill. In addition, I was also of the mindset that if I let my grass grow for longer periods of time between cutting it, it would produce a more robust and healthier lawn.

Turns out that I was wrong on both accounts. In doing the research on my lawn’s grass, I discovered that certain types of grass should be cut to specific lengths on a regular basis. By trimming a lawn to the required height, it forces the grass to grow and become more robust. This is a key to well maintained golf course. While this flies in the face of what most of us would initially consider logical, understanding the facts behind this mode of maintenance make so much sense. Fruit trees get trimmed on a regular basis to produce a stronger and healthier tree. Same thing applies to smaller plants such as grass.

Even though a healthy lawn needs water to survive, watering too much can hinder grass from growing properly. Just like all living things, we require certain ingredients to keep us alive. And yet, too much of anything can be harmful. The same thing applies to grass. In fact, it’s only recommended to water grass when it begins to look wilted or discolored. In addition, by withholding water, the soil has a chance to aerate, which can help with overall water absorption.

While there are other steps, these two dramatically improved my lawn’s appearance and has produced a yard to be proud of. Give it a try and see what happens.

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This information has been brought to you by the folks at Global Turf Equipment, purveyors of the Toro Workman and other greenskeeping tools and supplies. Click on the hyperlink to see what they can offer you.

Best Ways to Clean Your Soccer T-Shirts

Before you go running to the soccer shop to buy a new uniform, take a moment to glean some insights on the best ways to keep your jerseys clean.  Let’s take a closer look at the most common types of stains your soccer jersey can collect.

Perhaps the most obvious stain is caused by grass and dirt, after all, soccer is played in an open field.  For these types of stains, first rinse the uniform in a sink to remove all of the loose dirt and mud.  Brushing off these stains or rubbing them off vigorously in the sink will do the trick.  Another method would be to hang the uniform on a clothesline and spray it off with a garden hose.  Next soak your stained soccer t-shirts in the sink or a bucket for one hour or overnight as needed.  After this soaking period, inspect your jersey to see if it still has noticeable grass stains.  If so, try rubbing it out with a mixture of one part vinegar and two parts water.  Let it set for two to three hours and repeat if needed.

Another stain that can pack quite the pungent punch is caused by sweat.  There are a number of known remedies for this, but let’s explore a couple of simple ones.  The first is to use a mixture of one part dish soap and two parts hydrogen peroxide.  Scrub this mixture into the stain and let it sit for a couple of hours.  You can also try using salt.  Mix 4 tablespoons of salt with 1 quart of hot water and simply sponge in the solution until the stain disappears.  As yet another solution you can find in your kitchen, mix equal parts of lemon juice and water and scrub it into the uniform to remove unsightly underarm stains.  Stains from deodorant can also accompany some sweat stains.  For these, try pouring a bit of vinegar onto the stain and rub it into the fabric.  Incidentally, vinegar works for sweat stains as well.  For a remedy that’s a little more unconventional, try crushing two aspirins and mixing the powder in half a cup of warm water.  Soak the stained areas of the uniform in that solution for a two to three hours.

After utilizing these pre-wash tactics, the next step is to throw the uniform in the washer.  Be sure to use cold water!  Hot water can cause certain stains to set in during the wash cycle as well as fade letters and numbers on the uniform.  Lastly, hang dry the uniforms instead of using a dryer to prevent stains from becoming permanent and keep it from shrinking.  Also, avoid direct sunlight.

Now play hard, rinse, and repeat.

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Guest post is provided by Soccer Garage.  We carry a wide variety of soccer uniforms and accessories to keep goalies looking sharp while defending a season’s worth of soccer goals.  Find us at www.soccerrgarage.com.

Stay Safe on the Road

Road safety is a high priority concern for each and every one of us. Every year, over thirty thousand people die on the roads of America. One in every one hundred thousand Americans die every year due to road related accidents. In fact, car crashes is one of the leading causes of death for people under twenty five years old. The worst part is that all of these deaths are unnecessary and could have been avoided with better road safety—that is over a quarter of a million lives for the last eight years alone!

Despite the obvious dangers associated with road travel though, taking the car has become deeply embedded in our way of life that it would be ridiculous to stop people from using cars. What can be done is improve and implement best practices for road safety. Better informed and better prepared drivers will lead to significantly fewer deaths.

The good news when it comes to road safety is that the incidence of road deaths has been steadily declining for the last decade, more or less. This is partly due to better information dissemination, improved vehicle construction and safety standards and improved traffic law enforcement. With regards to law enforcement, the dropping cost of radar technology has helped in the enforcement of the rules of the road. A typical traffic policeman is now equipped with a police radar gun to apprehend speeders. Radar speed limit signs are now prevalent as well which serves as a deterrent for potential speeders.

Newest Stalker Radar Gun Models

Stalker Radar is well known throughout the world as the leader in law enforcement and sports radar capabilities. Owning a stalker radar gun gives a dependable and accurate measurement for measuring the speed of objects. With the menacing tagline, “You can’t outrun what you can’t see,” Stalker shows its dedication to providing top quality products to their customers. Stalker Radar is known for its innovation as a leader in radar measurement technology. Here are some applications for Stalker’s newest additions to their product line.

For Baseball

For sports scouts and coaches, Stalker provides accurate plate speed and pitching speed measurements to help players improve their skill and strategy. A baseball radar gun from Stalker gives you the smallest and lightest handheld radar guns on the market today. The Pro II Stalker Radar gun is the newest gun in the  product line for all applications. Most specifically, Stalker Radar is popular in the sports sector, perfect for car racing, watercraft, snow mobile racing, paintball, and of course, baseball.  The Stalker Pro II is the only professional radar gun with a speed range of 5-700 MPH. This gun has a 300 foot range to safely measure pitching and batting speeds from a distance. This gun uses commercial ballistic chronographs to precisely measure release speeds.  Those who best benefit from Stalker radar in the sports industry are major league scouts and pitching and hitting coaches.

For Law Enforcement

Radar guns are not only used for sports enthusiasts, they are used to enforce traffic as well. The Stalker Lidar LR is the most popularly promoted product right now for law enforcement, with a newly engineered design. This radar gun is completely recreated for cramped urban settings with vehicles moving closely together. The pinpoint accuracy of a Stalker Lidar Gun offers precision in settings where radar detection would normally be a challenge. This product comes with 44mm lenses for better target illumination and signal-to-noise ratio. These improvements to the optics of the radar gun allow for measurements up to 4,000 feet away from the place of operation. The improvements upon the original Lidar design include a Heads-Up display that shows both speed and range information on the same screen. It also has faster target acquisition, upgraded electronics a 32-bit processor, and a CPU clock rate at 5 times the speed of the original design. Stalker Radar is continuously developing new ways to make their products better than their competition, and better than their previous models. Stalker is never satisfied with the status quo, and surely their new additions will find a comfortable home in law enforcement everywhere.

Common Errors with Police Radar Guns

A lot of people are curious about police radar guns. They want to know if they are really accurate.  Here is some information about radar guns that the police use that you might find useful.

Even though most of these guns operate accurately and effectively, there’s a few situations when errors in the radar can happen. An error that could happen is called a Cosine Effect. This is an amount of error that results from that angle where the radar’s hitting the vehicle. An example’s when the car’s moving directly toward that radar with an angle that’s 0 degrees.  There’s no Cosine Effect. When there’s a greater angle, there’s a bigger error that’s caused by it. But even this can be accounted for and adjusted.

Some other errors which guns can make consist of a shadowing error. This happens when a radar gun’s moving and it’s picking up a vehicle’s speed that’s going slower than the police car.  It’s mistaking the speed of the other car for the ground speed. This causes the oncoming traffic as being measured fast inaccurately.  There’s something else called a ghosting error. This happens when a portion of the beam picks up some motion from another item. Scanning errors happen when the gun’s moving and it’s picking up the signals wrong.  Panning errors happen when the gun is moving and it’s too close to a processing unit, and that causes interference.

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