CINCINNATI — Cincinnati Bearcats catcher Kory Klingenback grew up with the same goal many young ballplayers in the area have.

“Cincinnati kids want to play for Cincinnati,” Klingenback said.

It wasn’t an easy path, but Klingenback is living out his dream.

“They didn’t really look at me out of high school. I had the opportunity to come here after junior college. It was just surreal to me that it all came true… what this place means to me is quite insane,” Klingenback said.

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“When he comes out of that locker room every day, it doesn’t matter if he went 4-for-4 the last day; he’s going to give me a smile, he’s going to give me a ‘how you doing, coach?’ He’s going to say ‘coach, you look good today.’ I know he’s lying, but that’s OK,” Cincinnati baseball head coach Jordan Bischel said.

Inside baseball, Klingenback is what’s known as the ultimate “clubhouse guy.”

“I just want to play for the city and help these guys win as much as I can,” Klingenback said.

Last season, he only had one hit.

“I really didn’t want to play baseball anymore after last year,” Klingenback said.

“What’s awesome about Kory is when you’re a junior and get one hit at this level, you do one thing and you transfer out. You go somewhere else where you’re going to play more,” Bischel said.

“My family was here. I had all the support here. He came up to me last year in Texas, when we lost to Texas Tech, and he said, I gave him a hug and he said, ‘I want you back here.’ And that really hit me,” Klingenback said.

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“You have to get his; you have to strike people out, you have to do those things to win. But you need 40 guys who believe in what they are doing and who don’t make it about themselves,” Bischel said.

Klingenback said it’s all for the Queen City.

“It’s just for this place, it’s for Cincinnati. I just love it so much. I just love everybody around it,” Klingenback said.

Because of the game that raised him, after his baseball career ends this spring, the Elder High School alum will continue to serve the city he loves by joining the Cincinnati Fire Department.

“I just want to help the guy next to me, the guy to the left, the guy to the right,” Klingenback said.

Before he trades in his catcher’s mask for a fire helmet, Klingenback has postseason baseball to worry about. The Bearcats are awaiting to find out if and where they will play in their first NCAA regional since 2019.

“The signs on the wall (that show the Bearcats’ postseason accomplishments) back there haven’t been updated in a while,” Klingenback said.

Bischel said Klingenback has helped the Bearcats “win a heck of a lot more games than most people realize.”

“I want to leave this place better than I found it when I first got here,” Klingenback said.

Jeff Reddoor demonstrates his stone etching work. He’ll be at Pipestone National Monument May 24 through May 30 as part of the Monument’s artist-in-residence program. Contributed photo

Jeff Reddoor will be the first of four Indigenous artists who will share their work at Pipestone National Monument this year as part of an artists-in-residence program. Reddoor will display and demonstrate his work from May 24 through May 30.

Reddoor said he comes from a family of artists and he’s been making art as long as he can remember. His art has included oils, acrylic, pen and ink, earrings, key chains, wood carving, stone etching and more.

“I’ve done all kinds of art, but what my passion has been the last several years and what I enjoy doing the most is wood carving, and I carve fish, I carve trout,” Reddoor said.

Reddoor uses primarily basswood and red cedar for his trout, which he said take hundreds of hours each. He paints some of them with great detail to make them look as authentic as possible. He also carves rocks from cedar to look like the river bottom under the fish and pinyon pine for stands to hold the fish.
“I love the look of pinyon pine,” Reddoor said. “When it’s sanded and shined, it just has this beautiful, raw look to it that really complements the fish.”
Trout are a subject he knows well as an avid fly fisherman.

“I like to go do research work, which means I like to go fishing,” he said with a laugh. “I tell my wife, ‘I’ve got to go do some research,’ and just disappear and go fly fishing all day.”

He said he also enjoys hunting and often hunts stones and wood to use in his artwork as he’s hunting animals.
Reddoor said he plans to demonstrate his stone art while he’s at Pipestone National Monument. He said he uses slate native to Utah, where he lives, that has red, gray and purple in it, and uses a scraper to etch images such as symbols, feathers and wildlife into the stone. He said that work has “more of a southwestern tone” to it.

Reddoor said he also plans to bring a family pipe made of pipestone with him during his visit. He said his family has been the pipe carrier for the Assiniboine Tribe and the pipe has been in his family for around 60 years. His father, Courtney Reddoor, made it and carried it until he died. Then his brother, Stormy Reddoor, carried it, and now he does.

“It’s absolutely beautiful,” Reddoor said. “It’s got an eagle’s head on it.”

In addition to making visual art, Reddoor is a performing artist, who plays the guitar and flute. He plans to play some Native flute music while he’s at Pipestone National Monument.

Reddoor’s family is originally from Poplar, Mont., which is on the Fort Peck Reservation. He and his family now live in Fillmore in central Utah, where his wife of 40 years, Tammy, is from. They have seven children, including two they recently adopted.

Reddoor is retired after a 40-year career with the state of Utah, which concluded with him serving as the director of the Utah State Building Board. He said he now spends most of his time making artwork and music, and hunting and fishing.

Other Indigenous artists who will share their work during week-long residencies at Pipestone National Monument over the summer include Holly Young from June 21 to 27, John Knife Sterner from July 25 to 31 and Marlena Myles from August 23 to 29. For more information, call 507-825-5464 ext. 214 or visit the park website at www.nps.gov/pipe. Event details and program schedules will also be posted on the park’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/PipestoneNPS.

This is a sample of the stone etching done by Jeff Reddoor, who will be sharing and demonstrating his art work at Pipestone National Monument from May 24 to May 30. Reddoor is from Utah and is the first of four Indigenous artists to be featured this year during Pipestone National Monument’s artist-in-residence program. Contributed photo

This is one of the trout carved and painted by Jeff Reddoor, who will be the first of four Indigenous artists featured at Pipestone National Monument this summer. In addition to wood carving, he does stone etching, bead work and more. Contributed photo

These are some of the earrings made by Jeff Reddoor, who will be the first of four Indigenous artists at Pipestone National Monument this summer as part of the Monument’s artist-in-residence program. He’ll be demonstrating his work there May 24 through May 30. Contributed photo

A year after San Francisco Giants’ legend Buster Posey purchased a famed hunting ranch straddling the border of Mendocino and Lake counties, an outdoor hunting camp for kids that operated there has been forced to exit the property and is making its new home in Sonoma.

Founded in 1998, Kids Outdoor Sports Camp had spent the past five summers offering youth ages nine and up hands-on experience and education in hunting, angling, and shooting sports at the 4,129-acre Six Points Ranch in Potter Valley.

Now, the camp is moving to Wing & Barrel Ranch in Sonoma following Posey’s purchase of the Six Points Ranch last July for $10.4 million, SFGate reported.

“The property where we previously held our camps (Six Point Ranch) was sold and we moved,” camp director Glennon Gingo told The Press Democrat in an email this week.

Gingo declined to elaborate, saying he had “a busy Summer ahead with camp preparations,” though camp founder and Executive Director Judy Oswald told SFGate that the camp’s move was due to Posey’s disinterest in having camps on his property.

Since returning to the Bay Area in 2023 with his wife, Kristen, and their four children following a brief post-retirement stint in his native Georgia, Posey has loomed large in the Bay Area sports world, becoming the San Francisco Giants’ president of baseball operations in September in addition to his role as a minority owner with the team.

Posey, an outdoor enthusiast who previously owned the 106-acre Springer Lodge in Butte County, also owns a $8.3 million six-bedroom home in the East Bay city of Lafayette.

An email to the Giants requesting a comment from Posey did not get a response.

A previous real estate listing for Six Point Ranch highlighted the property’s thousands of acres of scenic wilderness including four lakes and numerous natural springs. The property’s abundance of wildlife — including tule elk, blacktail deer, wild boar, and turkey — had previously made it a destination for world-class hunting, according to property development and management firm Black Mountain Properties LLC, which lists the ranch among its portfolio of properties.

On its website and in a Wednesday Instagram post, Wing & Barrel Ranch said it was excited to welcome Kids Outdoor Sports Camp, which kicks off its weeklong overnight camps on June 15. The private hunting club added that campers would be staying on-site in new camp cabins on the property.

The ranch did not reply to an email request for comment.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month and we’re highlighting a new tool that student athletes are trying out to help maintain their physical and mental toughness in competition.

For Boston English High School basketball player Nisaiah Nieves, the sport is an escape.

“Once you get in the gym, nothing else matters,” he said.

For Nieves and his teammate Janeuey Brea, playing the sport is more than just a way to stay in shape. It’s an opportunity to achieve goals, make connections and develop leadership skills.

“We tried to talk to each other as much as we can, stay connected. Because at the end of the day, we all had the same goal, the same end goal. We always wanted to win,” Brea said.

And they did — advancing well into the playoffs despite having a brand-new team with players who didn’t speak the same language. They credit a bit of their success this year to a focus on their mental game.

“The mental is like 90% of the game. It’s like 10% physical,” Nieves said.

This past fall, through a partnership with Let’s Play Boston, they met with former NBA Rookie of the Year Michael Carter-Williams, a Massachusetts native, to learn about a new startup, NDUR. Pronounced “endure,” its app provides a unique platform for student athletes to chat with each other on issues and pressures they face.

Carter-Williams has been vocal about his mental health struggles in the league and is a co-founder of NDUR.

The first game for the season was called off when a bus never showed up to take the East Boston High School boys’ basketball team to Fall River.

“Just by, you know, speaking to them about my own issues, it kind of had let them open up about their own issues and it really was impactful,” he said.

NDUR’s president, Darren Orr, has worked with hockey players as an agent most of his career. His father is the legendary Boston Bruin Bobby Orr.

“He had some amazing skills,” said Orr of his father, “and he had a supportive family and all those things that are really important. But he had no one to turn to … to talk about that mental barrier he was running into.”

Orr said NDUR aims to be a free starting point for athletes, meeting them where they’re already at — their phones.

“You can’t always fix every single issue that’s out there. But what we try to do is tamp down those embers before they become a forest fire,” he said.

Through his Marked as Winners foundation, Baltimore Ravens safety Marcus Williams is empowering young people to overcome challenges and achieve their full potential through education and mental wellness.

The young players tell us they’ve taken strategies learned on the app, from others’ first-hand experience, to the court and the classroom.

“Other people like sharing their point of views on their mental state. Like, for example, like an injury, they’re sharing how that affected them. And you can, like, build off of that and either help the person or you can use that information to help yourself as well,” Nieves said.

“Breathing was a big part of, like, processing everything that was going on during the season because there was a lot of stuff we went through and breathing really helped,” Brea said.

NDUR founders plan to incorporate more advice from pro- and collegiate-level athletes on the app to keep the conversation going. The city of Boston is on board hoping this partnership will change the game around mental health.

“The more that we normalize it, the more that people can ask for help and get the help that they need,” said Tyrik Wilson, Boston’s Youth Sports Initiative manager.

“If you make a bad play or you have a bad practice, like, it’s not the end of the world,” explained Brea. “We got each other because this is like a family. It’s brotherhood. So we all hold each other down.”

Shaquille O’Neal is hoping his kids will take a shot at something different.

The basketball legend, who is dad to Taahirah, 28—whom he shares with former girlfriend Arnetta Yardbourgh—and Myles, 28, Shareef, 25, Amirah, 23, Shaqir, 22, and Me’arah, 19, whom he shares with ex-wife Shaunie Henderson, recently revealed that he has always told his children, “We don’t need another basketball player. At all.”

“So if you want to play basketball, cool, but please go to law school,” he said on the May 23 episode of Today. “Please go to medical school. Please be an engineer. Please be an AI inventor. Just do something else.”

Shaquille added, “So I give them freedom to be who they are. I never press them.”

The 53-year-old explained that his adult children will only benefit from his success if they choose to work hard themselves. 

“In order to touch daddy’s cheese,” he joked, “you got to show me two or three degrees.”