[Noozhawk’s note: This is the latest in a series of articles on the myriad of recreational activities along the Santa Barbara waterfront. Click here for the complete series index.]
Pershing Park is a city facility shared with Santa Barbara City College, which uses it for softball, baseball and tennis (for gym classes and intercollegiate athletics).
In addition, the baseball field is used for the Santa Barbara Foresters, providing a summer’s worth of entertainment from high-level college players hoping for an MLB call — and indeed, several Foresters get that call.
This year, under coach Bill Pintard’s tutelage, the Foresters won their ninth National Baseball Congress World Series, and second straight, this month in Wichita, Kansas.
Over the years, the park has seen high-level fast-pitch softball leagues and elite tennis players on its eight courts, including the best players coached by legendary former longtime SBCC coach Jack Sanford.
When not used by SBCC, the courts are available for public use for $5 per player, payable when the city monitor makes the rounds. There are no reservations.
And the park has a large, free parking lot.
The park was named in 1919, as athletic uses were expanding and park areas nearby were consolidating. It needed a name, and “there were hundreds of suggestions put in,” according to Santa Barbara historian and author Neal Graffy.
Victory Park was suggested, to honor the recent allied victory in World War I, then one Clara Fiander suggested it be named after Gen. John Pershing, commander of the victorious American Expeditionary Forces on the war’s western front.
The suggestion took off as if it had wings, according to Graffy.
“Try to think of how long it takes for something to happen in Santa Barbara,” he said. “I just laughed that somebody made a suggestion and everybody agreed, and a month later the park is renamed Pershing Park.”
Indeed, at that time there were many streets, schools, parks and squares across the country named after Gen. Pershing.
The mesa on which SBCC sits, formerly the Leadbetter Estate, butts up against Pershing Park, and a side of that mesa is taken up by SBCC’s La Playa Stadium. When not hosting college athletic events, the stadium track and steps are available for public use, and groups can rent the field from the college. (The field and track are nearing the end of renovations.)
La Playa Stadium Steps
Emi Saffian, a 1998 UCSB alum, recently made her first trip back to Santa Barbara since graduation.
She said it was an emotional visit to the campus and beyond, hitting the old favorite spots. Of course, that included …
Running up and down the La Playa Stadium steps?
Saffian, 45, did just that “almost every day” as part of crew-team workouts in her student days. Those steep, waterfront-facing steps at the SBCC stadium are a wakeup call for many fitness-seeking Santa Barbarans.
She said she couldn’t resist a reprise on her recent visit — but just 10 up-and-down circuits, with a break after each, instead of the hour-straight sessions of rowing-crew training days. She also revisited the city’s nearby Los Baños del Mar Pool, another frequent training spot.
“It makes me remember what a go-getter I was,” she said. “It takes me back to that young dreamer.”
When it’s not hosting athletic events, La Playa Stadium is a haunt of local young dreamers, middle-age professionals, off-duty firefighters, young moms with kids, and others.
The stadium has 42 wooden bench-seats, and for most running the aisles, that takes 84 steps.
“Oh my God, my thighs are shaking,” Saffian, a native of Budapest, Hungary, yelled after one ascent to the top. “They (the steps) get steeper the higher you go. That’s gnarly.”
But for her, as for so many who tackle them, it’s a good gnarly.