going out of business!
Story #5234 System AKRE A 9 4X Pg. Date 7/09/09 Story:
Time 22:29:26 Date 7/08/09
Topic: INL TAKES Keyword INL M TAKE
Page 1 CyanMagentaYellowBlack
www.Ohio.com
Akron Beacon Journal
d
Merger
Staff uses sports to train kids about life skills
Facilities use same coaching program
Continued from Page A1 resignation. S talter would eventually stumble upon the empty Pinnacle Sports complex on state Route 18 in Granger Township a few months later, but when he quit his Accenture job, he had no idea what the future would bring. ‘‘I’d like to tell you I had a lifelong dream to run training for kids,’’ he said. Instead, at the time he just knew, ‘‘It’s time to get out. ‘‘Suddenly, I find myself back here with no idea what I’m going to do,’’ he said. ‘‘It was a very introspective time in my life. My mother had passed in February 2001,’’ he said. He started thinking about a book his church Sunday School class had recently studied, called Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance by Bob Buford. The premise, Stalter said, is that you spend the first half of your life trying for success and at some point you wake up and say, ‘‘Go back and play the second half of your life for significance.’’ ‘‘That rang a real bell for me. I was richly blessed having been a partner [at Accenture]. I didn’t have to find a job. I was struggling with the question of why God has blessed me,’’ said Stalter, who took some time to get more involved with the area Boy Scouts. Stalter said in 2001 he would not have considered himself a ‘‘religious person.’’ He attended church regularly and thought of himself as a person with integrity. But the Sept. 11 experience ‘‘allowed me to look back on my track record and career. I was far more successful than Earl was capable of. There was something
Search Edition •
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Stalter
Continued from Page A1
PAUL TOPLE/Akron Beacon Journal
Two large indoor fields with seating are in the center of the original building at Pinnacle Sports in Granger Township. The owner estimates he has invested $10 million in the complex since buying it in 2002. else going on. I started to awaken to God’s role in my life and being a steward of what God has given me,’’ he said.
Life-changing sign On the last day of October, Stalter was driving down Route 18 when he noticed a sign saying a bank was directing an immediate sale of the closed Pinnacle Sports. ‘‘I had been in this facility many times as a soccer dad. I never thought about it as an investment,’’ said Stalter. But something made him call the bank. Asked why he decided to buy the building, Stalter paused. ‘‘It was God. In that introspective period, I thought, ‘What did I learn? I’ve got all this success and where did I learn that?’ A lot of what I learned was on sports teams as a kid,’’ he said. ‘‘I was never a star. I was one
of those kids with the natural ability to ride the bench. I was first-string nothing and secondstring everything. Winning is a unique event that’s defined within the context of a game. Success is a long string of wins while maintaining your character and development.’’ But Stalter said he blames ‘‘us parents’’ for teaching kids the idea of ‘‘winning at all costs. We’ve destroyed the opportunity to build our kids.’’ S talter the businessman thought the Pinnacle complex was too nice of an asset to the local community to see it go away. That’s when it occurred to him that he could create an environment where coaches would have a positive influence on kids in a positive environment. Stalter readily admits he had the vision of helping kids, but had no idea how he was going to do it.
‘‘It was my faith far more than my business ability here,’’ he said.
New business model Stalter first re-opened Pinnacle as a rental facility in 2002, but in 2004, he decided to change the operation from what he called wholesale to retail. ‘‘We decided to go upstream and go straight to mom and dad and training the kids.’’ The new business model is more profitable and also allows Stalter’s staff to concentrate on a mission of training kids in athletics and life skills through their sports involvement. Stalter, who did have a partner when he first bought Pinnacle but is now the sole owner, is in the business office five days a week, but says he leaves the dayto-day operations to Rich Garbinsky, his general manager. But watching kids learn about sports and becoming good peo-
owners at The Edge were also using the Coaching 4 Life program and it became clear their missions were similar, he said. Mike Orazen, one of the owners of The Edge who now is president of Coaching 4 Life, said the integration of The Edge programs and facilities with P innacle has been wonderful. The merger allows Pinnacle to expand its reach to more athletes in Northeast Ohio, said Garbinsky, who spent 15 years as director of CYO Camp Christopher before coming to Pinnacle in 2005. ‘‘We’re running training programs to augment the current training done by school teams or clubs or travel teams,’’ he said. The core business of The Edge was speed and strength training and rental of the facility. The Edge will continue as a brand and operate within Pinnacle at both locations. Together the two facilities, which are about 30 minutes apart, have 200 , 000 square feet of indoor space.
ple through sports is what keeps Stalter going – and gets him choked up. ‘‘The opportunity that I have to walk out the door and see these kids and families is tremendous. It gets me out of bed in the morning.’’ Stalter said the ‘‘idiocy of people flying planes into buildings is enough’’ to make one think that a life is not just about making as much money as possible. Thinking back on his Ander-
A9
Pinnacle Medina also has a new 140 , 000 - square - foot outdoor lighted turf field, which provides space for soccer, baseball, softball and lacrosse training programs and games. Training at the facilities is also available for basketball, football, volleyball, martial arts and jump rope. Pinnacle officials declined to disclose financial details of the merger, but Stalter estimated he has invested $10 million in the Pinnacle Medina facility since buying it in 2002, including $2.5 million for the new turf field. Programs are available for age groups from toddlers through college students. Pinnacle also has some senior citizen recreational leagues, but the core training is mostly for youth athletes, said Garbinsky. The Coaching 4 Life program, which Stalter and Orazen are partners in separately from Pinnacle, will also eventually offer training to area coaches in the program’s principles. Later this month, the program is offering its first free Captains Leadership Training at Pinnacle Medina for high school captains and coaches. Information is available by calling 330-239-0616. T he W eb site is http:// www.pinnaclesports.org. Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@ thebeaconjournal.com.
sen and Accenture days in making a good living, Stalter said he was ‘‘a very lucky man.’’ ‘‘Somewhere there’s the recognition that, ‘Yes, I’m going to go do something significant.’ Once I stopped and got off the train and started listening , I asked God, ‘What’s next?’ He showed me.’’ Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@ thebeaconjournal.com.
THE END GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!
7 %
AT LEAST 78% to PHIL MASTURZO/Akron Beacon Journal
Coach Mike Stoerkel talks to players before a game at the Pinnacle Sports day camp in Granger Township. The facility recently merged with The Edge Sports Performance Academy in Twinsburg.
Associated Press
White, Black or Beige
79
Reg. $99.95
Men’s & Women’s • Available in Widths Service ✯ Quality ✯ Value
No Reasonable Offer Refused
NOTHING HELD BACK!
S
LA
RGE
S T SE
Long’s Shoes
LE
REGARDLESS OF COST OR LOSS!!!!
C
BUILDING CLOSING PERMANENTLY AVAILABLE! MOVING TO BE WITH MY FAMILY IN INDIANA
1007 Ghent Road, Akron, (at I-77 exit #138)
nt
Ghe
330-666-RUGS (7847) 800-995-RUGS
Celebrating 40 years
21
ORIENTAL RUGS & CLEANING
(Rt. 59, 2 blocks west of Rt. 91)
21
77 X
Open: Mon-Sat 10-8 • Sun 12-8
3260 Kent Rd. Stow 330-688-7808 www.longsshoes.com
Name Your Own Price
OFF OR MORE!!!
90
ON TI
Consumers know less about the water they pay dearly for in bottles than what they can drink almost for free from the tap because the two are regulated differently, congressional investigators and nonprofit researchers say in new reports. Both the Government Accountability Office and the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, recommend in reports released Wednesday that bottled water be labeled with the same level of information municipal water providers must disclose. The researchers urged Americans to make bottled water ‘‘a distant second choice’’ to filtered tap water because there isn’t enough information about bottled water. The working group recommends purifying tap water with a commercial filter, however. Both reports were released at a congressional subcommittee Wednesday morning. Bottled water – an industry worth about $16 billion in sales last year – has suffered as colleges, communities and some governments take measures to limit or ban its consumption. As employers, they are motivated by cost savings and environmental concern because the bottles often are not recycled. B ottled water sales were growing by double-digit percentages for years and were helping buoy the U.S. beverage industry overall. But they were flat last year, according to trade publication Beverage Digest.
Beverage Digest editor John Sicher said some consumers are turning on the tap during the recession simply because it’s cheaper. F rom 1997 to 2007, the amount of bottled water consumed per person in the United States more than doubled, from 13.4 gallons to 29.3 gallons, the GAO report said. The issue before a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee was less about waste and water quality concerns and more about the mechanics of regulating bottled water. As a food product, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and required to show nutrition information and ingredients on its labels. Municipal water is under the control of the Environmental Protection Agency. The two agencies have similar standards for water quality, but the FDA has less authority to enforce them, the GAO said, and the environmental agency requires much more testing. Subcommittee chairman Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said the subcommittee was requesting information Wednesday from a dozen companies on their water sources, treatment methods and two years’ results of contaminant testing. It was not immediately clear which companies were being contacted. ‘‘Consumers may not realize that many regulations that apply to municipalities responsible for tap water do not apply to companies that produce bottled water,’’ he said in statements opening the hearing.
$
DAYS LEFT!
Exit
138
Montrose
www.HamedRugs.com
Thank You For Over 33 Years!
N
! LOCAL ECONOMIC STIMULUS W E
IN MONEY-$AVING COUPONS
Coming Saturday, July 18, in the Akron Beacon Journal and Ohio.com!
g08-2624280
By Emily Fredrix
Special Value
82 g09_2649324
Groups recommend same information required from municipal providers be included on label
New Balance 811 Stability Walker
OH IO ’
New rules sought for bottled water
Fit Right, Feel Good!
g09-2647978
K M YY CC
by MTURNER
Search Edition
Time 22:29:26 Date 7/08/09
Topic: INL TAKES Keyword INL M TAKE
Page 1 CyanMagentaYellowBlack
www.Ohio.com
Akron Beacon Journal
d
Merger
Staff uses sports to train kids about life skills
Facilities use same coaching program
Continued from Page A1 resignation. S talter would eventually stumble upon the empty Pinnacle Sports complex on state Route 18 in Granger Township a few months later, but when he quit his Accenture job, he had no idea what the future would bring. ‘‘I’d like to tell you I had a lifelong dream to run training for kids,’’ he said. Instead, at the time he just knew, ‘‘It’s time to get out. ‘‘Suddenly, I find myself back here with no idea what I’m going to do,’’ he said. ‘‘It was a very introspective time in my life. My mother had passed in February 2001,’’ he said. He started thinking about a book his church Sunday School class had recently studied, called Halftime: Moving from Success to Significance by Bob Buford. The premise, Stalter said, is that you spend the first half of your life trying for success and at some point you wake up and say, ‘‘Go back and play the second half of your life for significance.’’ ‘‘That rang a real bell for me. I was richly blessed having been a partner [at Accenture]. I didn’t have to find a job. I was struggling with the question of why God has blessed me,’’ said Stalter, who took some time to get more involved with the area Boy Scouts. Stalter said in 2001 he would not have considered himself a ‘‘religious person.’’ He attended church regularly and thought of himself as a person with integrity. But the Sept. 11 experience ‘‘allowed me to look back on my track record and career. I was far more successful than Earl was capable of. There was something
Search Edition •
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Stalter
Continued from Page A1
PAUL TOPLE/Akron Beacon Journal
Two large indoor fields with seating are in the center of the original building at Pinnacle Sports in Granger Township. The owner estimates he has invested $10 million in the complex since buying it in 2002. else going on. I started to awaken to God’s role in my life and being a steward of what God has given me,’’ he said.
Life-changing sign On the last day of October, Stalter was driving down Route 18 when he noticed a sign saying a bank was directing an immediate sale of the closed Pinnacle Sports. ‘‘I had been in this facility many times as a soccer dad. I never thought about it as an investment,’’ said Stalter. But something made him call the bank. Asked why he decided to buy the building, Stalter paused. ‘‘It was God. In that introspective period, I thought, ‘What did I learn? I’ve got all this success and where did I learn that?’ A lot of what I learned was on sports teams as a kid,’’ he said. ‘‘I was never a star. I was one
of those kids with the natural ability to ride the bench. I was first-string nothing and secondstring everything. Winning is a unique event that’s defined within the context of a game. Success is a long string of wins while maintaining your character and development.’’ But Stalter said he blames ‘‘us parents’’ for teaching kids the idea of ‘‘winning at all costs. We’ve destroyed the opportunity to build our kids.’’ S talter the businessman thought the Pinnacle complex was too nice of an asset to the local community to see it go away. That’s when it occurred to him that he could create an environment where coaches would have a positive influence on kids in a positive environment. Stalter readily admits he had the vision of helping kids, but had no idea how he was going to do it.
‘‘It was my faith far more than my business ability here,’’ he said.
New business model Stalter first re-opened Pinnacle as a rental facility in 2002, but in 2004, he decided to change the operation from what he called wholesale to retail. ‘‘We decided to go upstream and go straight to mom and dad and training the kids.’’ The new business model is more profitable and also allows Stalter’s staff to concentrate on a mission of training kids in athletics and life skills through their sports involvement. Stalter, who did have a partner when he first bought Pinnacle but is now the sole owner, is in the business office five days a week, but says he leaves the dayto-day operations to Rich Garbinsky, his general manager. But watching kids learn about sports and becoming good peo-
owners at The Edge were also using the Coaching 4 Life program and it became clear their missions were similar, he said. Mike Orazen, one of the owners of The Edge who now is president of Coaching 4 Life, said the integration of The Edge programs and facilities with P innacle has been wonderful. The merger allows Pinnacle to expand its reach to more athletes in Northeast Ohio, said Garbinsky, who spent 15 years as director of CYO Camp Christopher before coming to Pinnacle in 2005. ‘‘We’re running training programs to augment the current training done by school teams or clubs or travel teams,’’ he said. The core business of The Edge was speed and strength training and rental of the facility. The Edge will continue as a brand and operate within Pinnacle at both locations. Together the two facilities, which are about 30 minutes apart, have 200 , 000 square feet of indoor space.
ple through sports is what keeps Stalter going – and gets him choked up. ‘‘The opportunity that I have to walk out the door and see these kids and families is tremendous. It gets me out of bed in the morning.’’ Stalter said the ‘‘idiocy of people flying planes into buildings is enough’’ to make one think that a life is not just about making as much money as possible. Thinking back on his Ander-
A9
Pinnacle Medina also has a new 140 , 000 - square - foot outdoor lighted turf field, which provides space for soccer, baseball, softball and lacrosse training programs and games. Training at the facilities is also available for basketball, football, volleyball, martial arts and jump rope. Pinnacle officials declined to disclose financial details of the merger, but Stalter estimated he has invested $10 million in the Pinnacle Medina facility since buying it in 2002, including $2.5 million for the new turf field. Programs are available for age groups from toddlers through college students. Pinnacle also has some senior citizen recreational leagues, but the core training is mostly for youth athletes, said Garbinsky. The Coaching 4 Life program, which Stalter and Orazen are partners in separately from Pinnacle, will also eventually offer training to area coaches in the program’s principles. Later this month, the program is offering its first free Captains Leadership Training at Pinnacle Medina for high school captains and coaches. Information is available by calling 330-239-0616. T he W eb site is http:// www.pinnaclesports.org. Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@ thebeaconjournal.com.
sen and Accenture days in making a good living, Stalter said he was ‘‘a very lucky man.’’ ‘‘Somewhere there’s the recognition that, ‘Yes, I’m going to go do something significant.’ Once I stopped and got off the train and started listening , I asked God, ‘What’s next?’ He showed me.’’ Betty Lin-Fisher can be reached at 330-996-3724 or blinfisher@ thebeaconjournal.com.
THE END GOING OUT OF BUSINESS!
7 %
AT LEAST 78% to PHIL MASTURZO/Akron Beacon Journal
Coach Mike Stoerkel talks to players before a game at the Pinnacle Sports day camp in Granger Township. The facility recently merged with The Edge Sports Performance Academy in Twinsburg.
Associated Press
White, Black or Beige
79
Reg. $99.95
Men’s & Women’s • Available in Widths Service ✯ Quality ✯ Value
No Reasonable Offer Refused
NOTHING HELD BACK!
S
LA
RGE
S T SE
Long’s Shoes
LE
REGARDLESS OF COST OR LOSS!!!!
C
BUILDING CLOSING PERMANENTLY AVAILABLE! MOVING TO BE WITH MY FAMILY IN INDIANA
1007 Ghent Road, Akron, (at I-77 exit #138)
nt
Ghe
330-666-RUGS (7847) 800-995-RUGS
Celebrating 40 years
21
ORIENTAL RUGS & CLEANING
(Rt. 59, 2 blocks west of Rt. 91)
21
77 X
Open: Mon-Sat 10-8 • Sun 12-8
3260 Kent Rd. Stow 330-688-7808 www.longsshoes.com
Name Your Own Price
OFF OR MORE!!!
90
ON TI
Consumers know less about the water they pay dearly for in bottles than what they can drink almost for free from the tap because the two are regulated differently, congressional investigators and nonprofit researchers say in new reports. Both the Government Accountability Office and the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, recommend in reports released Wednesday that bottled water be labeled with the same level of information municipal water providers must disclose. The researchers urged Americans to make bottled water ‘‘a distant second choice’’ to filtered tap water because there isn’t enough information about bottled water. The working group recommends purifying tap water with a commercial filter, however. Both reports were released at a congressional subcommittee Wednesday morning. Bottled water – an industry worth about $16 billion in sales last year – has suffered as colleges, communities and some governments take measures to limit or ban its consumption. As employers, they are motivated by cost savings and environmental concern because the bottles often are not recycled. B ottled water sales were growing by double-digit percentages for years and were helping buoy the U.S. beverage industry overall. But they were flat last year, according to trade publication Beverage Digest.
Beverage Digest editor John Sicher said some consumers are turning on the tap during the recession simply because it’s cheaper. F rom 1997 to 2007, the amount of bottled water consumed per person in the United States more than doubled, from 13.4 gallons to 29.3 gallons, the GAO report said. The issue before a subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee was less about waste and water quality concerns and more about the mechanics of regulating bottled water. As a food product, bottled water is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration and required to show nutrition information and ingredients on its labels. Municipal water is under the control of the Environmental Protection Agency. The two agencies have similar standards for water quality, but the FDA has less authority to enforce them, the GAO said, and the environmental agency requires much more testing. Subcommittee chairman Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said the subcommittee was requesting information Wednesday from a dozen companies on their water sources, treatment methods and two years’ results of contaminant testing. It was not immediately clear which companies were being contacted. ‘‘Consumers may not realize that many regulations that apply to municipalities responsible for tap water do not apply to companies that produce bottled water,’’ he said in statements opening the hearing.
$
DAYS LEFT!
Exit
138
Montrose
www.HamedRugs.com
Thank You For Over 33 Years!
N
! LOCAL ECONOMIC STIMULUS W E
IN MONEY-$AVING COUPONS
Coming Saturday, July 18, in the Akron Beacon Journal and Ohio.com!
g08-2624280
By Emily Fredrix
Special Value
82 g09_2649324
Groups recommend same information required from municipal providers be included on label
New Balance 811 Stability Walker
OH IO ’
New rules sought for bottled water
Fit Right, Feel Good!
g09-2647978
K M YY CC
by MTURNER
Search Edition
