John Zant, a sportswriter for more than four decades who covered everything from Friday night football to the Olympic Games, is being inducted into the Santa Barbara Athletic Roundtable.

For years, Zant was part of the group that selected Hall of Famers; now’s among them.

“It’s a panorama of all the great athletes that have come out of Santa Barbara,” Zant said. “Many of them I covered.”

Zant has written about local sports legends such as Sam Cunningham, Eddie Matthews and Karch Kirally.

Zant appears in the latest episode of Santa Barbara Talks with Josh Molina.

He got his start working at the Santa Barbara News-Press in 1968. Before that, while in high school, he wrote a football column for the La Canada Valley Sun.

Zant grew up in Los Angeles during the 1960s, when Sandy Koufax and the Dodgers were flying high. He had season tickets to the Los Angeles Rams and went to USC games.

“They were all winners,” he said.

Zant worked as a sports writer for decades at the Santa Barbara News-Press, and was among those who were fired after a demonstration on a bridge in 2006. He finished his career writing columns for the Santa Barbara Independent.

Zant in this podcast talks about his career on the sports desk, covering games, dealing with coaches and parents, covering baseball, and the Olympics.

In one of his favorite memories, Zant recalls when he walked the entire length of the Santa Barbara County coastline, a 110-mile trek that resulted in an amazing 10-part series.

“Everyday, I would walk part of that coast and then I would write a story about it,” Zant said. “It became quite a sensation at the time.”

During the last part, he walked from Carpinteria State Beach to Rincon Creek. By that time, the series was so popular that a couple of hundred people joined him for the final walk.

“That was the greatest assignment I have ever had, and the most fun,” Zant said.

Joshua Molina is journalist who currently writes for Noozhawk and teaches journalism at Santa Barbara City College. He formerly covered politics and land use for the San Jose Mercury News. Santa Barbara Talks is an independently owned podcast where Molina looks to bring together voices from all perspectives to discuss and provide solutions to the challenges related to housing, education, transportation and other community issues. Subscribe to his podcast here and consider a contribution here.