LOS ANGELES (PRWEB) October 14, 2019

Renowned Life and Corporate Mentor, Kimberly Lou, is releasing her fourth book, "Becoming Who You're Meant to Be: Eliminate Destructive Patterns and Unlock the Ultimate You," an integrative self-help guide offering readers the tools to tap into their own ability to take control of their personal story and achieve the next level of success in their personal and professional careers.

In Becoming Who You're Meant to Be, Lou is addressing the three core elements required to achieve an optimized life: mental focus, emotional fitness and physical training.

"What gives some people the ability to take their lives to heightened levels of success, while others can barely make it through the day? How can we become the person we know deep down we were meant to be without burning out or breaking down? Many of you are already successful, but it seems like its impossible to reach your greatest potential because you feel you are already operating at your maximum capacity." Says Kimberly Lou.

"What if I were to tell you that there is a source so great and so powerful within you that all you need to do is tap into it? I am here to tell you there is a whole other level of success you never even knew existed. Imagine a great source that is enormously rewarding, yet all it takes to access this source is a change of your old ideas."

In Becoming Who You're Meant to Be, Lou teaches readers how to build a solid foundation for a new life using personal freedom as their foundation.

Kimberlys programs are geared towards men and women looking for more than just standard life-coaching, in order to excel at the maximum level of their ability without burning out. She expands the concept of fitness to address personal accountability, mindset, nutrition and physical exercise a fully cohesive approach to sustainable health and success.

Lou is not only giving readers the tools for success, she's showing them how to put those tools into practice in order to motivate them to write their own story and dictate the future of their personal and professional successes.

Becoming Who You're Meant to Be is now available on Amazon (Paperback or Hard Cover), Kindle and Audible.

KIMBERLY LOU is an integrative Life and Corporate Mentor who coaches top CEOs, entrepreneurs, celebrities, and world-class athletes around the world. She helps clients accelerate and thrive through mental focus, emotional fitness and physical training. In addition to Kimberlys mentoring programs, she is an accomplished author, and a nationally recognized spokesperson for mental health and wellness. With over two decades of experience and extensive education, Advanced Fitness and Certified Wellness Specialist, Kimberly Lou creates attainable solutions using techniques that work at all fitness and wellness levels. Kimberly Lou has helped doctors create programs addressing mental illness, cognitive disabilities, and major addictions, in addition to, facilitating workshops and support groups for clients struggling with cognitive, mental, emotional, drug, and eating disorders.

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Integrative Life and Corporate Coach Kimberly Lou Releases Fourth Book "Becoming Who You're Meant to Be: Eliminate Destructive Patterns and...

"I'm PC. That might give you pause, but I am," says the 73 year old Pope of trash.

Early into John Waters 90-minute Make Trouble show at the Sydney Opera House a delightful mix of stand-up comedy, career retrospective and life coaching he sets out the nights agenda: were working towards a new kind of ghastly.

John Waters knows ghastly: he hasnt made a career off generating pearl-clutching so much as snatching the whole necklace and letting them scatter on the ground.

Fifty years since their release, his biggest films Female Trouble, Pink Flamingos continue to make conservatives trip over their filthy irreverenceShowgirls-style. While he hasnt directed a film since 2004, his many books, live shows and festivals continue to inspire queerdoes across the globe, including his latest book, Mr. Know It All.

If you missed out on Make Trouble, here are six pieces of advice Waters had, from navigating PC culture with irreverence, accepting your flaws and amending one of his most famous quotes.

We were a little worried when Waters referenced how college audiences require trigger warnings early into the night, but despite the continual references to PC culture, he never teetered into Jerry Seinfeld or Dave Chappelle territory.

Yes, Waters referenced not being able to get away with sleeping with your colleagues and questioned how difficult it is to be a delinquent in 2019, but his millennial bashing always came from a place of warmth. The harsh reality of PC culture is that parts of it are ridiculous we often lose our points in semantics, or celebrate war criminals for being feminist icons and Waters reminds us its okay to laugh at it.

The difference was that Waters, impressively, always punched up. There was always an empathy to his jokes, whether about college campus politics, people with emotional support animals, or autosexuals claiming to be the final letter of the LGBTIQA+ acronym. It was unlike anything wed seen before in stand-up at this level: a nuanced position built up over decades as one of the queer communitys leaders, and a sign that a 73-year-old can listen to todays emerging voices and opinions.

When Waters said, Im PC. That might give you pause, but I am, he fought against the connotations and limitations of the term, where conservatives have turned caring about people into a dismissive punchline.

Of course, he isnt perfect (a tangent about how Johnny Depp was always a gentleman during filming of Cry-Babywas unnecessary, to say the least) but Make Trouble, without directly saying it, demanded a more nuanced way of navigating the world, one where one comment doesnt invalidate all others.

Where many older queer men struggle with anything that doesnt centre themselves, Waters repeatedly noted that the trans community were the new target of conservatives and need the wider communitys support.

At one point, Waters went off about TERFS trans exclusionary radical feminists, who believe trans women are not real women and grew up privileged as they were assigned male. But, of course,he did this in a distinctly trashy way, imagining Big Freedia running into a gender-neutral bathroom to piss on a Republican voters child.

Im PC. That might give you pause, but I am.

Waters also was ready to acknowledge that many of his films havent aged well in regard to trans issues, specifically referencing Desperate Living, but stood by a scene in Pink Flamingos where actress Elizabeth Williams flashes a male pervert by revealing her breasts and penis.

According to Waters, the scene was important to Williams, a trans woman, as it meant she was making the joke before anyone else could. Waters repeatedly mentioned owning the joke as a powerful move forward.

In one part, Waters asks what a juvenile delinquent looks like now, saying its a far cry from smoking behind the bleachers. He lands on hackers shutting down the government and the likes of Greta Thunberg, who he calls the one person that angers conservatives as much as trans people.

In short, he jokes that its not enough to just be gay to be a rebel against society: its a good start, he says, but to actually stand on the fringes, you have to do more than smoke cigarettes and suck dick. In an era where LGBTIQ identity and anti-establishment aesthetics have been co-opted by capitalism, we need to do more to make a stand.

Throughout Make Trouble, Waters keeps coming back to scatology. More than half a decade later, Divine eating dog poo in Pink Flamingos remains a steaming hot talking point, even though it wasnt really that weird for his freakish friends.

He calls Flamingos a film of limits, and makes a big deal about of pushing whats deemed acceptable and whats not today, that war is less about what eating shit than how you present and showing up in hostile spaces. In Waters world, eating shit is the same as being unapologetically you.

Still, he says theres power in the Trojan Horse approach, noting how even racists like Hairspray, and that Divines presence in the mainstream remains a beacon of weirdness and gender-subversion even if that was never her intent. Divine wasnt trans. He didnt want to be a woman, he notes. He wanted to be a monster. The latters still important, too.

Waters has made a living off irreverence, and recommends failing upwards and how he owes his early career to drug-fuelled brainstorms. While he doesnt suggest we all do the same, its a reminder to not take our lives so seriously.

Talking about Polyesters infamous smell-o-vision, he says, All over the world people gave me money to smell a fart. We should be so lucky.

At the end of the night, audience members stood behind mics and yelled out questions from the crowd. We ended on an important one: a fact-check as to whether Waters ever said his oft-attributed quote, if you go home with someone and they dont own books, dont fuck them.

He did, for reference, but wanted to give an update: If you go home with someone and they have books in their bathroom, dont fuck them. Some things remaintoo gross.

John Waters latest book Mr. Know It All is out now. Photo by Prudence Upton. His Australian tour continues in Melbourne on Friday 18 October at Hamer Hall, and Saturday 19 October at MONA in Hobart.

Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and co-host of Sleepless In Sydney on FBi Radio. He is on Twitter.

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Poo Is Still Political, And 5 More Nuggets Of Advice From John Waters - Junkee

For business organizations, teaching leaders how to coach can be a game-changer. It is not just value added, it is value multiplied.

Human Resource Executives who have implemented company-wide coaching programs affirm the profound impact of leaders acquiring the ability to coach and harnessing it to optimize performance, enhance workplace relationships, and fast-track employee development, among other results.

Monde Nissin HR Director Luchi Vitales introduced Coaching to her Senior Managers several years ago, enabling them to provide agile leadership as the company grew. The intervention helped to create a safe and nurturing environment where employees can productively talk about personal and professional concerns, learning needs and development goals, with leaders who genuinely listened. Heartened by the initial results, she extended the program to practically all leadership levels and campaigned to sustain the coaching practice.

The positive changes most widely acknowledged by the participants, she says, lay in essentially two areas first, that they developed a more holistic, strategic perspective in managing their respective teams and targets, vis--vis the corporate business thrusts; and second, that they acquired a stronger capability to effectively handle the behavioural issues of their people. These critical learning points are precious gains for every coaching advocate.

Vitales is, herself, a Professional Coach with credential from the International Coach Federation (ICF). She was the 2011-2012 President of the ICF Philippines Chapter, the group organizing the International Coaching Summit for November 8, at the Conrad Hotel, Manila.

Designing coaching programs to build leaders, teaching leaders how to coach their people to their highest potentials, and bringing about a corporate coaching culture are just a few of the enticing subject matters covered by the Summit.

Championing the Coaching Culture

For many HR heads, striving to achieve a company culture that thrives on coaching can sound like chasing the holy grail. The challenge begins with a shift from the telling, instructing, and loading up mode of developing people, to stirring their own passions, drawing out what they truly want, and getting them to act on realizing the possibilities they see for themselves.

How deeply the practice takes root in the workplace is often the result of two factors HR making a stand for it, and top management championing the cause.

Senior Vice President of JG Summits Corporate Resources Group, Nic Lim, strongly underscores the critical role of leaders as coaching sponsor, champion, or advocate. They are the first to be convinced that this program will be of value to their own development and the whole organization, he says. They need to go through the whole process, in order to fully experience and apply the learnings back to their teams.

Lim believes that if an organization is to develop the coaching competency which involves listening skills, delivering feedback, delegating work and encouraging initiative, and if the ultimate intent is for everyone to demonstrate this competency, then development should start from the top. For him, it is imperative that leaders walk their talk. He stresses that leaders also need to evolve and they cannot give what they do not have.

A ripple effect is created in the whole organization when leaders start demonstrating their new skill sets in influencing and coaching their talents, he states. Then, learning by osmosis can easily take place.

PHINMA Corporations Vice President for Human Resources, Lin Mukhi, agrees. She relates that the case for a corporate coaching program first emerged during a business planning session, when people performance was highlighted as a key driver of organizational success. It was decided to institutionalize coaching as a way of life among our leaders, she shared. It was an initiative to strengthen their leadership pipeline, but it also laid down the tracks for cultivating a culture uniquely their own. Coaching training was launched in March 2015.

Our Executive Committee, together with the Presidents of our strategic business units, took the lead and got together for a day of coaching training, she recounts. The Management Committee members from our different businesses followed suit, and today, we make coaching training part of the program for employees moving up from individual contributor to people leader.

The top executives of PHINMA took the program as a journey of learning and re-learning, for and with their people. Mukhi recalls their President Ramon del Rosario Jr., and their Chief Operating Officer Roberto M. Lavina, issuing a joint statement which provided a compelling framework for what they had set out to do. It said This is an opportunity to deepen our leadership perspective. It is our people that got us where we are today, it will be our people who will take us where we want to be.

Mukhi notes with pride that what started as an action point to address their talent management risks, particularly the need for succession planning, has now become a distinctive mark of the PHINMA brand.

Valuing the Takeaways

Leaders consistently coaching their own people sets off a value chain that permeates the entire organizational performance.

Their biggest gain, Mukhi muses, lies in the tone they have set for their culture and how they lead people. The PHINMA service philosophy of Making Lives Better is now also pursued for the growth of our employees, she declares. She further points out that the People Practices Survey they use for measuring the success of their people initiatives has yielded inspiring outcomes. Comparative results over the first two years showed we moved up in percentage points on four indicators: Building Capability, Managing Performance, Leading and Inspiring People and Empowering and Involving People, she summed up.

At JG Summit, Lim is looking at specific desired outcomes. I see our leaders being skilled in giving and receiving feedback, such that they are able to make the coaching conversations even more effective and accurately targeted, he says. I see our leaders shaping the learning and coaching culture, breaking perceived communication barriers and the traditional functional silos.

Coaching is no panacea, says Monde Nissins Vitales, but it is definitely an organizational handle by which Leaders can be grounded on a culture of authentic connection to people. Assessing the impact of coaching on her organization, she says, There is now a balance of quantitative and qualitative inputs in conversations founded on the coaching process and discipline.

The experience has been gratifying, says Lim. Facilitating the transformation of individuals and organizations is a compelling cause. Coaching helps build satisfying and lasting relations at work. It is a great platform for keeping your talents continuously motivated to come to work.

The coming International Coaching Summit hosted by ICF Philippines is a great opportunity for Human Resource Development Executives and other people champions to acquire new inputs, and look at more exciting ways to sustain employee growth and engagement. Visit the ICF Philippines website to check out registration procedures, Summit content and flow, and the top-notch line-up of speakers and facilitators from the global coaching frontiers.

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Leaders growing leaders: Amplifying the impact of Coaching - INQUIRER.net

Fiona Campbell, the controller of BBC3, is responsible for programmes such as RuPauls Drag Race UK, Glow Up and Fleabag. The 49-year-old lives in east London with her artist husband and son, 7

Q. Im an ambitious woman and am being fast-tracked up the company. How do I admit Im feeling burnt out? Shani, 38

A. I was in a similar situation when I returned from maternity leave. The BBC was advertising for a new head of current affairs, and I was advised to apply. I hadnt slept for 10 months, so I was, like, I cant go there. But a female colleague said: Just fill out the form dont get caught up in agonising about it. The next thing I knew, I had an

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What She Said: I'm an ambitious woman and am being fasttracked up the company. How do I admit I'm feeling burnt out? - The Times

They inspire fear and fascination in equal measure. Corofin are Galway's kingpins and today they look to secure their seventh county title in a row. It is a remarkable run by a tremendous team. Near-rivals Tuam Stars are the sole side left standing in their way.

It is a Tuam team that only saved their senior status with a late win in the relegation play-off last year. Then they were managed by Galway legend Ja Fallon. Now it is his staunch ally, Tommy Carton.

He is hoping to manufacture a monumental shock and for the first time since 1994, bring theFrank Fox Cup upCloontooa Road.

That year they faced Corofin too and it took extraordinary endeavour in the form of a last-gasp point to win it. The star who kicked that score was a young teenager by the name of Tommy Carton.

"I was only 19 at the time," recalls Carton. "We had such a good team that year. The Fallons and the ODeas, a rake of senior players. I was only out of minor football and had been playing with Jarlaths in school.

"94 we won a final. 95 we got there again and we were bet. Sure when you are young, I thought we would be in the county final every year! It was something like nine years later before we even reached a semi-final against Killererin.

"I finished up and they got to a final in 2011, again in 2012. No joy. The years fly by. We know now you have to grab them when they are there."

Carton did not expect the call when it came. Two club representatives arrived with a request. Could he take the senior team?

Even during his playing career with Galway, coaching always appealed to him. The Connacht schools programme and underage sides were the starting point but the top job in the club was a different matter entirely.

In a town like Tuam with its fill of football devotees, senior manager is the epitome of notoriety. The sense of adventure and duty was overwhelming.

It wasnt even in my sights in December. I didnt even consider it. Ja Fallon would be my best friend really. We worked together, we played together. We won all our county u21s and senior together. He was the manager.

He was doing his job but it is like everything. Your heart is always with your club and when you are asked, I said Id give it a go. I never really thought about being the Tuam manager. I knew Id be involved somehow but it was always underage. Once they asked I had to think about it seriously, but I found the two lads I wanted with me and we decided to go bald-headed at it.

It was not only a return to Tuam but a return to Gaelic football. After a lifetime playing and then coaching, Carton took a break entirely a few years back.

"I was sick of it," he explains. The time away was occupied by a new pursuit. Triathlons. Ironmans. Many have noted this team's exceptional fitness this year and there is a reason for it.

"That experience gave me a better look at running techniques, ways of developing fitness. I even started doing running classes for the club."

It was at Triathlon Club Tri-Lakes where Carton connected with local man Leo Hynes. They ran their first half Ironman together in Galway and bonded over a shared love of activity, unsurprisingly with football at the heart of it.

Then in 2015, Leo became visually impaired. After initially giving up sport, his love was reignited when his wife introduced him to atandem bike. Soon Carton became his partner and Hynes rejoined Tri-Lakes Club.

"He was cycling around the estate with the wife and she broke her hand so I said I would bring him out. It took persuading to get him to enter that sort of craic but it worked out.

"I pointed him in the right direction and he is still doing it. Leo is some man.He played away before, football and that. I suppose sport is funny. After he went blind he got a kick out of a few other things in fairness to him. Thats life, you need to have something. We have football."

The dominance of Sunday's opponent should not be mistaken as a sign of an uncompetitive championship. It took a late equaliser to force a replay for the All-Ireland champions in last year's county final and no other side came closer.

As far as Carton is concerned, Corofin are the cream of a capablecrop.

"The hardest thing for Corofin is to get out of the county and they would agree. Sometimes they go into Connacht and breeze through it. Last year they breezed through everyone after Galway. Plentygames this year they found it hard. Look at the results, they were pushed tight."

That is not to say there is any question about the size of the challenge. Three All-Ireland titles in five years tells its own story. They are the club game's galacticos. The innovators.

"The boogeyman," Carton declares with a nervous laugh.

"Look they are brilliant, they are absolutely brilliant. They can blitz a team in five minutes. Tuam are under no pressure and that is great. If we lose by ten or twenty points, it is expected.

"That is the general consensus, the bookmakers are giving us no chance. No one is. Perfect.

"At the end of the day, it is a game of football. There is no majesty about it. 15 against 15, you can dress it up as much as you want but this is a game of football for us. Anything can happen."

You need to have something. At the helm of his club on county final day with a chance to clinch aconsequential crown. Does it get much better?

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The Galway Coach Hoping To Beat The Bogeyman And Repeat History - Balls.ie

In the basement of Nottingham Contemporary art gallery, Jennifer Lacey fans out a set of large homemade tarot cards. I pick a pink one, turn it over, and find an image of a baby chick beneath a pair of boob-like fried eggs. The artist Sarah Lucas immediately springs to mind but Laceys picture is actually a homage to Leigh Bowery, the outre superstar who was his own art object. Several portraits of Bowery hang a couple of floors above us, along with a video of him strolling through Manhattans Meatpacking District in a peanut bodysuit and one-shoulder floral dress. They are part of the exhibition Still Undead: Britain Beyond the Bauhaus, which explores the far-reaching influence of the Weimar art school. Lacey has drawn upon several of the artworks for her one-to-one performance, Extended Hermeneutics, which Im experiencing over a cup of tea in the cafe.

Lacey is an American choreographer who has been based in France since the start of the century. Presented by Nottinghams biennial dance festival, Nottdance, Extended Hermeneutics is, well, not dance. She may end each 30-minute session with a short solo but for the main part she will act as life coach, psychologist and fortune-teller. The tarot cards are part of a performance were doing together, she tells me. Were asking the art. The idea is to use artworks suggested by the cards to wrestle with a problem offered by the participant.

Ive been told that world peace and the economy are off limits and that I should choose a problem from my personal life. Having wandered around Still Undead and grown nostalgic in a room devoted to Leeds Polytechnic, I say I miss my family in Yorkshire and wish I could see more of them, but that home life with my kids in London is always hectic. Lacey seems pleased by the dilemma and we contemplate the fried eggs and happy chick on the tarot card, which is supposed to give us a feel of both the dynamics of the problem and the spirit of Bowerys work. I pretty much thought about Leigh Bowery and thought Id make him out of eggs, she explains cheerily.

I try to offer up a literal interpretation of the card as suggesting domestic routine and family life, with eggs the stuff of birth and breakfasts. But Lacey contemplates Bowerys back story and his move from one home to another: Australia to England. He had a British sensibility but was not from Britain. He came into a scene with a certain kind of unbuckled energy. She talks freely about his work the humour and terror, the homemade and the ridiculous, his use of makeup and masks.

Its like a mini art lecture, a fresh perspective on a familiar artist. The next tarot card used to suggest a possible future for my problem has a candle design inspired by the self-portraits of Gertrud Arndt, a Bauhaus photographer. Lacey riffs on how Arndt wanted to become an architect but ended up weaving and then embraced photography. She talks about the movements sexism and about art born from domesticity. Its fascinating I knew nothing of Arndt but feels as though were having to work harder to uncover any relevance to my problem. Not that Lacey ever promised any straightforward answers or predictions. Im not, like, Madame Blavatsky! she says when I ask how sceptical participants have been. If there is a truth that comes out of this its because of a collaboration, its because the person who is being read gives that information. In an artist statement from 2000, she wrote: I try not to resolve issues but rather present them in their integral knottiness, to show the gloss of the tangle.

Lacey, a dancer since the age of three, is something of a conundrum herself: a dance artist who creates pieces that arent always easily categorisable as dance. After years of work, she reflected on the research that went into her choreography. I became curious about this stuff that would accumulate around making dances other branches of making or thinking that would not go into the main product. Making a dance is such an incredible amount of energy.

Extended Hermeneutics brings a fresh resonance to the Bauhaus show in Nottingham and has already been performed to complement different exhibitions in other European galleries, including in Dsseldorf and Warsaw. Lacey shows me some of her old tarot cards based on works by Dal, Max Ernst and Meret Oppenheim. When I return to the exhibition, I certainly feel a greater personal investment in Bowery and Arndts works.

The most important element of this one-to-one piece, she says, is that the participant wants to make their life legible. It contrasts with most dance, where the audience are deciphering the performers moves. Having her body read constantly when she was a dancer was a consternation for Lacey and she became focused on how to push away certain readings of your body, especially as a young woman on stage.

One of her past projects involved paying people who knew nothing about dance to be her dramaturg for a week. Id present them with what Id call my empty solo, and whatever they thought should be done with it, Id do. I ended up doing things I normally wouldnt do and felt very odd doing. By the end of the project, she laughs, she had no idea why one thing might be better than another. It was an amazing feeling but peculiar.

The thing she likes about Extended Hermeneutics, she says, is that its a very direct contact with the public that isnt about me being interpreted. As we leave the gallery, she acknowledges: This is a strange thing to do. But she adds: I still get excited about art, man! Im a super-fan!

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'We're asking the art!' The one-to-one tarot show inspired by Bauhaus - The Guardian

Having a life coach is having someone work with you for motivation and progress on both personal and professional goals, and life coaching can be applied to multiple areas of your life including academics, career, health and weight loss, personal relationships, and work-life balance

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (PRWEB) October 07, 2019

JCs Recovery Center has announced the release of their most recent infographic: An Overview of Life Coaching. The infographic goes into what it is and the benefits of life coaching.

According to JCs Recovery Center, Having a life coach is having someone work with you for motivation and progress on both personal and professional goals, and life coaching can be applied to multiple areas of your life including academics, career, health and weight loss, personal relationships, and work-life balance..

This infographic also breaks down how-to effectively utilize life coaching.

To learn more information about the importance of life coaching, view the infographic here.

About JCs Recovery Center Our mission is to provide a safe, structured and nurturing environment, for individuals of all faiths. We will be a helping hand in your passage into a new, healthy and productive way of life centered in the love of God.

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JC's Recovery Center Releases An Overview of Life Coaching - PR Web

Story by Ryan Casey/CHSAANow.com

Photo by Matt Daniels/MattDanPhoto.com

Vista PEAK is, quite literally, in the midst of the best football season in school history. The Bison, which started varsity play in 2012, are 5-0 for the first time and are coming off a big 48-27 win over then-No. 3 Dakota Ridge last week a win that opened some eyes around the state and emphatically announced that this team was for real. That's not to say there's any celebrating going on yet. Vista PEAK, now ranked No. 5 in Class 4A, has another big game this week, against No. 10 Hinkley, an Aurora Public School rival. But before then, there's another first: Vista PEAK coach John Sullivan has been named the Broncos High School Coach of the Week. It is the first time the Bison have been honored as part of the program. The Broncos High School Coach of the Week is selected in partnership with the Broncos and CHSCA.

Years as head coach: 5 (28-17)

Years at Vista Peak: 5 (28-17, 5-0 this season)

Previous stops: Rangeview assistant (1999-2012), Vista PEAK assistant (2013-14), Vista PEAK head coach (2015-present).

Ryan Casey: Why did you want to become a coach?

John Sullivan: It was just kind of in my blood. My dad was one of my high school coaches, and I actually got into teaching so I could coach. At the time, when I first got into it, it was just because I loved the sport. But the longer I was in it, your priorities and your values kind of shift a little bit. Just seeing the kids when they finish playing football, and when they come back to see you, it just puts a really warm place in my heart, makes me feel good. I can see that I had some sort of impact on these kids, whether it be on the football field, or in life, helping these kids grow up, and being there for them. It's just something that has really been important for me.

Casey: What kind of coach do you think you are?

Sullivan: I like to challenge the kids, off the field and on the field. I put a high premium on character, and put a high premium on work ethic. But there's also a place where myself and our coaching staff is not afraid to tell the kids we love them, and we value them and believe in them.

There's kind of both ends of it, where we want to push the kids but also let them know that we're here for them, and it's unconditional, and we'll do whatever we can to help them be successful in life.

Casey: You guys are 5-0. What has the first part of the season been like?

Sullivan: As with pretty much every program in the state, we have kids that work hard during the summer, in the weight room and in 7-on-7. We had a pretty good idea, based on returners from last year, that we could possibly be a good team this year. There's a lot that goes into being a good team outside of football chemistry, and the involvement of the parents in a positive way. And we had all those things. We started the season with a lightning storm down at Mesa Ridge, and came back to school at 1 o'clock in the morning. We had some adversity right away, and our kids have really stepped up. I give them a ton of credit. They've absorbed what we've thrown at them. This is also year two of us kind of changing our offensive and defensive philosophy, and putting a greater premium on the character development stuff. And we're really seeing the fruits of our labor with that.

Casey: Last week, you beat Dakota Ridge 48-27. I think people thought you were a good team, but I think that win opened a few eyes. Do you feel that way, too?

Sullivan: I think so. I hope so. As a newer school, you're always struggling for an identity and trying to get noticed. We had a pretty good idea of what we have here, and then going into the game, our kids knew this was an opportunity for people outside of Aurora to try to take notice.

We hope that happened, and we're on to the next week. We have a big game against Hinkley, who is also undefeated.

Casey: I was going to say, that's pretty cool for Aurora Public Schools to have this game on Friday.

Sullivan: It is. It's awesome. You know, Rangeview has had some great success in basketball, but other than that, there hasn't been a whole lot of team sports in APS that have garnered a lot of attention, so it is really cool that two teams can go in and play a meaningful game in the middle of the year that has playoff implications. They're a good team, and we are really looking forward to this game, as well.

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Broncos High School Coach of the Week - DenverBroncos.com

KALAMAZOO, MI - Ron Welch started his coaching career with Brown Citys seventh and eighth grade boys basketball team in 1964, and after five decades around the game, theres hardly anything that surprises him anymore.

But he couldn't help but be taken aback when he learned earlier this year that he'd be joining the likes of John Beilein, Jud Heathcote and a personal hero of his -- Tom Izzo -- in the Basketball Coaches Association of Michigan's Hall of Fame.

The Southwest Michigan coaching legend and longtime leader of the Kalamazoo Valley Community College womens hoops team is part of BCAMs four-member 2019 induction class, which also includes current Hudsonville Unity Christian boys basketball coach Scott Soodsma, current Clinton Township Chippewa Valley boys basketball coach Kevin Voss and former Cornerstone University mens basketball coach Kim Elders.

Also joining Welch at the ceremony is Ron Boven, a middle school basketball coach at Mattawan since 1974, who is being inducted into the BCAM Hall of Honor.

The induction ceremony begins 5:30 p.m. Saturday at the Auburn Hills Marriot Pontiac's banquet room.

"Well, I was a little stunned to start with, but that kind of turned into gratefulness and thankfulness and just generally got me thinking about all the people that had a hand in getting me there," Welch said of the his hall of fame honor. "I've had some terrific players, and the bottom line is this is a wonderful, wonderful recognition, but it doesn't happen without having those good players that you've built relationships with and many of whom I still talk to. It's pretty special."

KALAMAZOO GAZETTE

KVCC women's basketball Head Coach Ron Welch huddles up with his players before his last game after 20 years of coaching at KVCC in Kalamazoo, Mich. on Monday February 23, 2015. (Christian Randolph/Kalamazoo Gazette)

Welch said he first got the spark to start coaching when his own high school hoops coach -- Brown Citys Lee Noftz -- hired him fresh out of college to be the middle school coach at his alma mater in Michigans Thumb region.

From there, he went on to coach middle school girls basketball teams at St. Joseph Parish in Kalamazoo, before taking his first high school job as the junior varsity coach at Kalamazoo Hackett Catholic Central.

Welch was promoted to lead the girls varsity program at Hackett, before getting his first shot at leading a college program at Nazareth College in Kalamazoo.

When Nazareth closed in 1992, Welch found himself out of a job, until Comstock athletic director Fred Smith offered him a job as the Colts girls junior varsity coach.

It was during his time at Comstock that Welch got to know Kalamazoo Valley athletic director Dick Shilts, who brought the now veteran coach into the Cougars family as a volunteer assistant on the women's basketball team.

One year later, Welch became the head coach of the Cougars' women's team, all while balancing varsity coaching duties at Comstock.

He continued to coach high school girls in the fall and junior college women in the winter for several years, before shifting his focus solely to Kalamazoo Valley.

Patrick Nothaft | MLive.com

KVCC women's basketball coach Ron Welch (right) and assistant coach Maureen Brown get a dousing from their team as part of a cold-water challenge benefitting the Kay Yow Cancer Fund. (Patrick Nothaft | MLive.com)

It turned out to be a wise choice for both Welch and the Cougars program, which went on to enjoy one of its most successful stretches, including a 29-game winning streak, a national No. 1 ranking and two trips to the National Junior College Athletic Association's Final Four.

"That was a great group of players, and you don't win 29 in a row without them, but they were also great people," Welch said of his time at Kalamazoo Valley. "We never quite got that cherry of a national championship, but we enjoyed tremendous success."

Welch retired from Kalamazoo Valley in 2015 after 21 seasons with the Cougars and watched his daughter Maureen, a former KVCC player and assistant coach, take over the program Welch brought to national relevance.

KALAMAZOO GAZETTE

KVCC women's basketball Head Coach Ron Welch is honored before his last game after 20 years of coaching at KVCC in Kalamazoo, Mich. on Monday February 23, 2015. (Christian Randolph/Kalamazoo Gazette) KALAMAZOO GAZETTE

He was inducted into both the NJCAA Hall of Fame and the Kalamazoo Hackett Hall of Fame in 2016, but he said the BCAM honor has a different type of significance for him because the nominations and voting are done by current and former coaches that have spent a lot of time in his shoes.

This one is pretty special because its being recognized by your peers, not someone elses opinion of what youve done, he said. "Not to down play the other ones, but that probably makes it the most special.

"A hero of mine, Tom Izzo, is in the same hall of fame, and he's a guy that in many ways I've patterned my programs after, obviously at a very different left, but I've had some success because of that."

Even after he retired from Kalamazoo Valley, Welch stayed involved in coaching, serving as an assistant under his son-in-law, Jesse Brown, on the Kalamazoo United high school football staff and helping his daughter, Maureen Brown, when she took over the Kalamazoo Hackett girls hoops head coaching job in 2017.

This winter is the first season Welch won't find himself courtside in a folding chair, and looking back on his five-decade run as a coach, he said it was never just about the game; it was also about helping his players reach their potential off the court.

Coaching basketball isnt just about basketball, its about teaching life skills and growing young men and women of character, and I feel weve done that along the way, he said. Im proud of the young men and women, whose lives Ive had the opportunity to touch in what was, up until last year, a 47-year journey of coaching.

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Longtime Kalamazoo Valley coach Ron Welch heading to BCAM Hall of Fame - MLive.com

Journal Sentinel Editorial Board Published 5:57 a.m. CT Oct. 11, 2019 | Updated 8:58 a.m. CT Oct. 11, 2019

Police tape hangs at the scene where a woman was shot and killed on Aug. 25 near Moody Park in the 2300 block of WestBurleighStreet in Milwaukee.(Photo: Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

For years, Oakland, California, had a well-deserved reputation as one of Americas most dangerous cities. It was routinely among the top 10 most violent cities in the nation.

But over a five-year period,Oakland cut homicides by 46% and nonfatal shootings in half, a dramatic turnaround that has received national attention.

Oakland showed that even a city with a long history of violence, difficult police-community relationsand turbulent politics could reduce gun violence quickly through smart partnerships between law enforcement and social service agencies using data to get a clear picture of what was happening.

RELATED: Oakland cut its shootings in half and saw a 46% drop in homicides.

RELATED: Read the full Journal Sentinel"Cycles of Violence" investigation

Milwaukee has adopted some of the same violence reduction tactics as Oakland but the city needs to do even more, and it needs to ensure that there is a stable, long-term funding stream for this vital work.

Oakland uses a data-driven approach to identify people at the highest risk of gun violence. Weekly shooting reviews help law enforcement understand why a shooting happened, identify the participants and figure out how to follow up.

Police and prosecutors meet with the people who are at the highest risk of being harmed during a call-in. Its done in collaboration with Oakland Unite, a nonprofit that coordinates violence prevention in the city.

The message to potential victims is this: We know youre at high risk of being shot. We want you to stay healthy and out of prison. We have services and opportunities for you.

Oakland Unite might offer intensive life-coaching, for example, or priority access to housing and employment assistance. The city also has an emergency protection program for people who are in imminent danger.

The results speak for themselves. From 2012 to 2017, homicides fell from 126 to 72and shootings were down from 556 to 277. While there is likely more than one reason for the drop in violence, Oaklands proactive violence reduction efforts increasingly are seen as a major factor.

The work is funded by Measure Z, which voters approved in 2014. The real estate/parking tax provides about $25 million a year to fund violence prevention, additional police officers and fire services. About $12 million a year is used to fund police; another $8 million goes for violence prevention.

The measure requires Oakland to maintain a minimum number of sworn police officers. If that doesnt happen, the city is prohibited from levying the taxes. And thats a key point: Oakland taxpayers knew exactly what they were getting for their money and had a built-in guarantee that they would get it for the life of the tax or the tax would go away.

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In Milwaukee, each week police, prosecutors, probation officers, federal agencies and others examine every shooting, looking for patterns. Their findings are shared with nonprofits that can provide supports, such as food, medical insuranceand housing. The reviews are funded out of the Police Departments existing budget. While police have done call-ins in the past, they are not doing them currently.

Milwaukees Office of Violence Prevention, meantime, operates 414LIFE, which began in November 2018. This public health approach, which draws on the experience in Oakland and other cities, is focused on interrupting conflict before people are killed.

The 414LIFE team has five outreach workers, four violence interrupters, a hospital responder and a program director. They mediate arguments, provide mentoring and connect shooting victims to basic resources such as medical insurance, foodand housing.

Since it began last November, 414LIFE has intervened in dozens of disputes and helped dozens of shooting victims. The $500,000 program was funded by the city and private donors its first year and will likely attract enough funding to continue for a second.

But this worthy program needs a clear, long-term funding source or it could fade away.

A new county sales tax championed by Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and other area leaders last month could be that funding stream.

The boost in the tax from 0.5% to 1.5% could bring in an estimated $160 million that would be shared across the county. The Republican-controlled state Legislature must first approve of putting a binding referendum before county taxpayers.

Violence takes a heavy toll on individuals and on a community. There are tragic consequences for victims but also an enormous cost in dollars. The average cost of a shooting, from treating the victim to holding the assailant accountable, is roughly $1 million, according to the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform. A 2015 Journal Sentinel analysis found that oneshooting in Milwaukee cost at least $700,557. Taxpayers bear a big share of these costs.

A case study of Oaklands experience, published in April by the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, made a series of recommendations for communities like Milwaukee that are trying to reduce violence.

City leaders must remain actively involved to ensure the long-term viability of these programs, the study recommended, and should make the case that investment in effective violence reduction programs will pay for themselves many times over.

Milwaukee should stick with 414LIFE and the Milwaukee Police Department must continue its practice, adoptedunder Chief Alfonso Morales, of treating every shooting as if it were a homicide. We need to find a sustainable way to pay for programs like these that reduce violence and savelives.

Barrett, County Executive Chris Abele and other community leaders should tell taxpayers exactly how they would use the new sales tax revenue with a portion of the funds earmarked forviolence reduction and policing programs with built-in accountability, like those approved by Oakland voters.

Then the Legislature should give local leaders permission to make their pitch for a safer city and county to the citizens through a referendum.

Thats democracy in action and gives the public a chance to directly back programs that will improve lives.

Read or Share this story: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/solutions/2019/10/11/use-new-sales-tax-fund-milwaukee-violence-reduction-program/3908956002/

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Editorial: Milwaukee's violence prevention program needs the steady support that a new sales tax could offer - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel