Not many people would call up Kevin Costner and ask him to help kick off a major rebranding effort. But as alumnus Brian Killingsworth, ‘00, saw it, the star of epic films like “Field of Dreams” and “Bull Durham” was a perfect fit for a major league baseball team looking to reinvent itself.

“We wanted to create an unforgettable event to kick off our new logo and new era in the history of our franchise,” the communication grad said.

The team, known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays since its franchise debut in 1998, changed its name, logo and color scheme this season as part of a two-year-long project aimed at reinvigorating the ballclub’s infamously small fan base.

Killingsworth, director of marketing and promotions for the American League East-leading Rays and a former catcher for the Saints, said research found that fans still had positive reactions to the team name.

“When fans referred to the team negatively, they called us the ‘Devil Rays,’ but when they referred to us positively, they chose to call us the ‘Rays,’ ” he said.

The new brand drops the fish and the word “devil” from its logo and focuses instead on a “burst of energy and light.” The color scheme — two shades of blue and a splash of gold — represents the water, sky and sunshine of the southwest Florida coast.

But how do you spark interest in a major league team that was struggling for attendance even with a new logo and uniforms? It’s simple: ask one of the sport’s biggest fans to headline the launch party. Killingsworth called up Costner, who along with his band Modern West performed at the launch.

And it worked. When Costner took the stage in the new Rays cap, the crowd went wild.

“Costner was the perfect fit to represent our brand for the new launch,” Killingsworth said. “He is an iconic Hollywood baseball legend.”

But this isn’t the first time the 2000 grad’s efforts have helped the Rays fill the seats at Tropicana Field. While studying for his MBA at the University of South Florida, he presented a proposal to attract college-aged students to games. The premise: special discounted tickets and concessions at Friday-night games.

“This program was very successful in helping to form a new group of Rays fans,” he said.

And it helped land him a job any baseball fan would love. After working his way up from an entry-level job, he now plans each year’s promotional schedule. This summer, the calendar boasts events such as themed Saturday-night music concerts and a “turn back the clock” game where players wear retro jerseys and then auction them off for charity.

Still Killingsworth — who once dreamed of a career in the major leagues and even played a season in the Cape Cod league with Rays first baseman Carlos Peña — believes it is the game of baseball itself that keeps fans coming back.

“No two baseball games are alike,” he said. “And each game you are guaranteed to see something you have never seen before.”

For more on the Rays, visit http://tampabay.rays.mlb.com/

The early 1990s was no time to break into the world of investment banking. That’s the way Cinda Sherman remembers it. She had just lost her job as a financial analyst in Jacksonville, Fla.; the market was tanking; and all around her, banks and brokerages weren’t hiring, but instead laying off workers.

Things got so bad that when a few friends offered her a basement to live in until she got back on her feet, she took it.

“It was literally concrete floors — no bathroom,” she said. “I had to go in with candlelight.”

It was during that down-and-out period that the ’86 grad hatched a plan that must have sounded crazy to some: launching an arts and culture magazine in a Florida market that was practically void of the material she wanted to cover.

But the business major with a love for the arts went ahead, founding her “Arbus” magazine in 1995. Today, the arts and business publication has grown with Jacksonville’s blooming arts community and counts as many as 100,000 readers an issue.

To top it off, two years ago Sherman won the Women in Business award from the Women Business Owners of North Florida. She won primarily because she had started the magazine without any money, help or knowledge of the publishing business.

“I about fell out of my seat when they called my name,” she said. “It was really quite an honor to be recognized after all those years of hard work.”

Sherman grew up in an artistic family. Her father, Michael, was a Flamenco guitar player and an associate professor of sociology at Flagler. She crafted her own appreciation for the arts into her concept for “Arbus,” which also partly stemmed from her own experiences with the few galleries that did exist in Jacksonville. She found them intimidating and a bit elitist. As a student at Flagler, she visited a gallery where a woman followed her throughout the gallery, peering over her shoulder the entire time.

“I just remember how much I hated it,” she said, “and I swore that I would never try to have the magazine come across that way — as though you were being looked down upon.”

Sherman said the magazine struggled for three or four years before really taking off.

“It took a long time for ‘Arbus’ to kind of get its own skin and create itself,” she said. “I’ve tried to let the community and the magazine create itself based on what people are looking for and what they are interested in.”

When the magazine first started out, Sherman said there were a lot of naysayers. Some even told her that it wouldn’t make it more than two years. This only made her work harder to make it succeed.

She believes the magazine fits well with the thriving arts and cultural scene across the First Coast, which she says now attracts people to the city and “gives it a heart and a soul.”

Sherman attributes her education at Flagler with the idea for “Arbus.”

“If I didn’t have that liberal arts background — that love for studying art and then the business side of it — I don’t think this would have ever come about,” she said. “It was the catalyst when I was looking for a way to get out of that hole or that basement, if you will. I hope one day to be able to have a legacy that I can leave behind with the magazine.”

Visit Arbus online at www.arbus.com.

At Surfari Charters, the workday itinerary goes something like this: Surf. Fish. Have lunch and a siesta. Surf or fish some more. Soak in natural hot springs. Relax in a hammock.

If you long for a career outside a cubicle, read on for some perspective from Flagler College graduates Lance and Kristin Moss. They went from waiting tables to operating a successful surfing and fishing charter business on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua and, as they put it, “living in an unbelievable place doing what you love.”

1. Get really lucky.
Writer E.B. White once said no one should move to New York City unless he is “willing to be lucky.” The same thing might be said for Nicaragua.

When Lance was a junior at Flagler, he started dating Kristin. He also pooled together money with friends and entrusted it to a guy who was “on a mission to build the first surf camp in Nicaragua.” Investors got an acre of land and a two-week stay at the camp for buying 1,000 shares of $5 stock.

“We bought the property site unseen and probably should have lost all our money,” Lance said. “Turns out, when we went down a few months later, we could not believe our luck. It was paradise: beautiful land, offshore wind all day, great surf, friendly locals and nobody around.”

2. Plan, invest, commit.
After he graduated with a major in accounting and business in 2000, Lance waited tables to save up $4,000. Cash strapped to his stomach, he promptly went to Nicaragua to build a house on his property; when he got there, he spent a summer washing dishes at the camp, surfing and realizing there was an opportunity to start a business guiding people to the best waves.

When Kristin graduated with her major in Spanish and Latin American studies in 2002, the couple moved back to Nicaragua and launched Surfari Charters. They had no competition or business plan: “It was just a way to stay in Nicaragua and surf and fish every day.” The couple got engaged in 2003, and Lance decided to use his graduate school money to buy a 25-foot boat that would allow Surfari Charters to take people fishing.

“With myself doing all of the boat trips and Kristin handling all of the organizational aspects, we made an awesome team,” he said. They provided guided transport and tour services for guests at the surf camp, and business kept growing.

3. Be tough.
Lance and Kristin’s success attracted some attention. A corporate surf travel agency offered them a lucrative contract that would mean working directly for the agency and giving up their independence. “The money was tempting,” Lance said, but they wanted to “not have to be part of the whole corporate routine.”

“The agency was furious … [they] told us, ‘If you don’t accept our contract, we’ll find someone else who will, and we will put them in your area.’ We were stunned.”

It was a turning point for Surfari Charters. The owner of the surf camp decided to take the corporate contract, so Lance and Kristin had to build their own facilities. Today, their guests sleep in cabanas with beds, televisions, hot water, private bathrooms and, in some cases, air-conditioning – amenities not taken for granted in Nicaragua. The Mosses also maintain a Web site with photos, videos and detailed information about Surfari Charters’ services: www.surfaricharters.com.

“We decided that our goal was to remain a small operation,” Lance said. “The whole experience taught us to be true to ourselves, and that even down in the depths of Nicaragua, the corporate monster could come and hunt you down.”

4. Have fun.
The Mosses will likely face even more competition in the coming years; tourism recently bumped coffee to become Nicaragua’s highest-earning industry, according to a market report by Euromonitor International. But Lance and Kristin are still managing to love their jobs.

“We work 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day,” Lance said, “but since we’re doing exactly what we want to be doing, it doesn’t feel like work. If we get a day off, we usually take the boat out.”

Of course, life in the Third World isn’t perfect. The Mosses have encountered some problems, most of them related to Nicaragua’s super-slow pace.

“A lot of things just take forever,” Lance said. “The biggest dangers are probably getting pounded while you are surfing … the hospital is a two-hour car ride at best.”

For more on Surfari Charter’s, visit www.surfaricharters.com

Gabrielle Gould didn’t plan on becoming an artist. The 1986 Flagler graduate majored in graphic design – known as commercial art at the time – and figured her fine arts studies would feed her personal, rather than professional, life.

Then she took a jewelry class, and her new hobby turned into a career.

“It was a sheer whim that Enzo [Torcoletti] offered that class,” Gould said about the now-retired Flagler sculpture professor. “Jewelry is almost like miniature sculpture … It’s great because it’s my work and my income, and it’s my art form.”

Today, Gould’s handmade necklaces, brooches and earrings are sold in roughly 45 boutiques nationwide. She’s been featured in an exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, as well as a National Endowment for the Arts grant and an Award of Excellence from the American Craft Council. Last year she was also featured on the cover of Ornament Magazine.

It’s a level of success she never anticipated when she first started handcrafting her jewelry, combining natural materials like feathers with more traditional silver and gold. At first, Gould sold her work out of her parents’ downtown St. Augustine shop, Gabrielle’s Contemporary. Soon, she had a sales representative teaching her the business of wholesaling and distributing her work all over the country.

At one point, Gould had several employees helping her hand-reproduce pieces. She’s scaled her business back in recent years to devote time to her daughter, but Gould continues to make a variety of popular items and create artisan, one-of-a-kind pieces.

“I try to bring the past into a contemporary feel,” Gould said, adding that her pieces are inspired by everything from walks on the beach to architecture to archaeological finds. She said more and more people are viewing jewelry as art or a form of self-expression, and many craft jewelers are shying away from traditional, status-symbol materials like diamonds.

“In the craft world today, so much is influenced by design, not materials,” she said. “So it would be the design that’s precious, not the semi-precious stones … What could be better? You don’t just put it on the wall and forget about it. I love that you can touch it and it’s functional. That’s the definition of a craft – it’s functional art.”

Kevin Cramer got lost in the Beartooth Mountains once in Montana. There were snowdrifts higher than his truck. A drugged-out girl opened his door, jumped in and tried to get him to camp with her friends. It kind of freaked him out.

Years later, that random excursion led Cramer to write a screenplay, which placed fourth in the 2007 Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards Competition. He has now sold the script to an independent film company that signed William H. Macy for the lead role.

Cramer said the movie, “Zen Dog in the Clouds,” explores “what could’ve happened if I had stayed.” The plot follows a soldier who gets lost in Montana, stumbles into a heroin deal gone bad and winds up getting kidnapped by a psycho who takes him along as he kills all his rivals.

It’s one of many screenplays Cramer has written since he graduated from Flagler’s communication program in 1999. Back then, he took Barry Sand’s writing for television class and added a creative writing minor, but he never anticipated the success he’s had. In addition to “Zen Dog in the Clouds,” 24 of his plays have been on theater stages in California, Pennsylvania and London.

“It [Flagler] was kind of the place where I discovered I could write and that people liked what I could put out there,” he said. “I’m so much further than I ever thought I would get … but I’ve got a bigger name than my bank account would suggest.”

Cramer said the movie industry should, hopefully, prove more lucrative for him than plays have; his stage productions have brought him “like $600” in total. A financial perk originally brought him to California, though – he got a full playwriting fellowship to study for his master’s degree at the University of California Riverside.

He’s committed to making it in Hollywood now, even though he entered the industry at “the worst possible time.” Right after he won the Sam Goldwyn honor, he received a slew of requests for his script. Just a few days later, the writers’ strike began.

“It killed me,” Cramer said. “Hollywood is a place where people don’t remember what they had for lunch … most of the time you have to beg people to look at your stuff.

“By the time January rolled around, half the people I’d talked to weren’t even in their positions anymore.”

But with Macy – who was nominated for an Academy Award for his acting in “Fargo” – and about $10 million to $15 million tentatively slated for FilmDaDa’s production of “Zen Dog in the Clouds,” things are looking up for Cramer. He said he hopes to find commercial success so he can keep working on the screenplays he really loves on the side.

Lechner runs what are called ultra-marathons — distances of 50 kilometers, 50 miles and even 100 miles.

“I just caught the bug and I really, really enjoy it,” he said. “It’s a sport that is exploding now because, at one time, the marathon was a challenge. But when you have 30,000 or 40,000 people running New York and Boston, people want more than that.”

Before he started running “ultras,” Lechner ran cross country at Flagler and was part of the college’s only men’s cross country team to win a conference championship. After he graduated, Lechner served a year as women’s cross country coach and led the team to a conference championship of their own.

“I felt very honored with the fact that I got to run at nationals and I got to coach at nationals at Flagler,” Lechner said. “That’s something I’m still really proud of.”

Lechner still coaches cross country at Reading High School in Reading, Pa., and it was his own high school coach that got him into ultra-marathons.

“I went from running half marathons right up to doing a 50-miler, which I don’t recommend,” Lechner said.

Lechner’s first ultra-marathon was the 50-mile Bull Run in Virginia. Now, he’s completed Bull Run eight times.

According to Lechner, the training method for an ultra doesn’t entail any 30-mile training runs.

“I believe in the less-is-more approach,” he said. “Your longest run is two or three hours and if you’re in shape, you can do an ultra. You’re not going to go out and do seven-hour training runs because all that will do is beat you up.”

Overall, Lechner has run more than 30 ultras – some 50-kilometer and some 50-mile – but his biggest accomplishment was completing the 2007 Massanutten Mountain Trails 100 in 29 hours and 10 minutes. In his first attempt in 2006, he had to stop at mile 76.

“It was the first race I ever quit,” he said. “So last year I went back and finished it. It’s one of the hardest ones in the United States. It’s the hardest one east of the Mississippi. Everybody there is good, and they only have about 60 percent finish. I would say ultra running is about 80 percent mental. Your body can do it, but if you let yourself get depressed or let yourself get really hurt … you’re doomed.”

Lechner completed the Massanutten a second time on May 18 and thrives on the accomplishment.

“The thing about cross country in general, when I went to Flagler, and even now, is you have to do it for you first and foremost,” he said. “There’s the boring nine-to-five job, there’s a million 5K and 10K runs. I wanted to do something different. It doesn’t matter where you finish … with a 100-miler, no one cares if you came in first or last. You ran 100 miles.”

Other highlights from Alumni Weekend included a faculty/alumni reunion in the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum and the Hugh Shaw Memorial Long Board Contest. A record 48 surfers turned out for the annual surfing event and beach barbeque, which also raises money for a scholarship fund.

Athletic Hall of Fame inducts four

Flagler College inducted three former athletes and one former coach into the Athletic Hall of Fame during Alumni Weekend. Inductees have made a significant contribution to the intercollegiate sports program, as well as significant impact in their communities since leaving Flagler.  
 
Robert V. Moullin, ‘88, Soccer Coach
Moullin served as the head coach for the Flagler men’s soccer program for 15 years (1982-96). He led the Saints to 11 district playoff appearances, three district championships and three Florida Sun Conference titles. Moullin was also named the Florida collegiate “Coach of the Year” twice. Moullin coached five NAIA All-Americans, seven Academic All-Americans and many more who achieved All-Region or All-Conference accolades. Moullin now serves as the director of coaching for the AFC Lightning Soccer Club based in Fayetteville, Ga.

Douglas E. Potkay, ‘76, Tennis
Potkay starred on the tennis courts for Flagler from 1973-76. He played an integral role in building a foundation of success for Flagler tennis. In the 1975-76 season, Potkay posted a 32-3 record playing at No. 1 singles. He also won the Invenarry Tennis Singles Championship in Miami in 1974 and then teamed with fellow Flagler player Frank Carleton to win the doubles title. Potkay went on to play professionally on the world tour.

James C. Presley, ‘91, Basketball
Presley was a four-year starter in men’s basketball at Flagler from 1986-90 and earned NAIA All-District 25 honors three times. He is among the all-time leaders in several categories, including points (1,243), rebounds (646) and field goals made (472). Presley’s 243 rebounds in the 1989-90 season rank seventh in the history of the program. He was also part of Flagler’s 131-85 demolition of Embry-Riddle in the 1988-89 season. Presley was selected as the team’s most valuable player twice.

Peter J. Ryan, ‘86, Tennis
Ryan was a two-time NAIA All-American (1982 and 1984) in tennis and earned the prestigious Ward-Ballinger Outstanding Player Award, signifying the NAIA’s best tennis player, in 1984. He was the second Flagler player to win the award. He and Colin Crothers advanced to the NAIA doubles championship in 1984.

For more photos from Alumni Weekend, visit www.flagler.edu/alumni.

Mark Your Calendars: Alumni Weekend 2009 is April 30 - May 3

Glorimar Maldonado Nosal’s writing career hasn’t gone exactly as intended – but her change in plans has helped improve educational opportunities for millions of Hispanic American students.

The 1996 Flagler alumna and English major hoped to write the great American novel after college. When she entered the job market, however, Nosal found herself involved in non-profit work. Now, about a decade into her career, she works as the marketing-communications manager of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans in Washington, D.C.

The White House Initiative’s goal is to help reduce the achievement gap between Hispanic American students and American students from other backgrounds. To accomplish that, Nosal crafts messages that help Hispanic American parents better understand No Child Left Behind rights and find resources their children need to succeed in school.

“I think being a novelist, for me, would have been a personal thing,” Nosal said. “But you don’t know if anyone else will benefit from it. [With this initiative,] you change one life, you can change generations … I don’t think I ever dreamed I would be in this situation, helping people with low incomes who didn’t have the opportunities that I had.”

Nosal’s parents are both Puerto Rican, and she was born in Homestead, Fla. She said her cultural background and Spanish language skills have helped her work with the White House Initiative. She also personally understands some of the challenges facing Hispanic American students and their parents: When Nosal was in kindergarten, administrators at her school removed her from regular class and sent her to an English as a Second Language class – without permission from her mother or teacher.

“My first language was English!” she said, adding that her mother made sure Nosal got back into the correct class. “My mother was a very informed and involved parent; she knew she had rights and choices, and she exercised her right to make decisions that would positively impact my academic career. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the 6 million Hispanic households in the U.S. with school-age children.”

In addition to writing and editing for the White House Initiative, Nosal develops strategies for fostering communication between learning-related groups throughout the country. And her work has paid off: The initiative currently has a national network of almost 500 partners, from nonprofit organizations to businesses. Those partners share their outreach activities, resources, best practices, news and contacts with the White House Initiative and each other.

“Regarding the achievement gap between Hispanic students and their non-Hispanic peers, I can tell you that slowly but surely that gap is decreasing,” Nosal said. “There have been steady gains in the math and reading levels of fourth and eighth graders since No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2001. In fact, according to the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress report, African-American and Hispanic students posted all-time highs in a number of categories.”

Nosal said she’s enjoyed her non-profit and government career – and all the opportunities to help and meet people she never would have known in the literary field.

“When I graduated from Flagler, everyone said, ‘Oh, English major. Are you going to become a teacher?’ ” Nosal said. “I did teach for a year at the junior-high level; it just wasn’t for me. After some time in the non-profit sector, I finally realized that being a civil servant and working for the federal government was exactly where I needed to be.

“What I love about it is you never know whose life you’re touching just by sending a link or an e-mail. One lady called from Honduras to thank us … it’s amazing, the contacts you make from all over the world.”

But that’s exactly what Amy Waers (‘06) has been doing while working as an assistant buyer in Wal-Mart Stores’ stationery department, a position that has her traveling overseas to China on buying trips.

“I actually got it [the position] through SIFE,” Waers said about Students in Free Enterprise, the entrepreneurial organization that has a chapter at Flagler. “We were at the national competition my junior year presenting, and I was recruited after one of our presentations by the senior vice president.”

Waers accepted the position and, upon graduation, moved to Bentonville, Ark., where the corporate office is located.

A highlight of her job has been the three trips she’s taken to China to buy stationery products. Waers said the location of her travels is based on which products she is responsible for purchasing and where they are made. Products like copy paper, envelopes and photo paper are predominantly manufactured in Asia.

Waers said she has embraced the many cultural differences she’s found between China and the United States.
“[The differences] became very real to me the first time I went over there,” she said. “It was like, ‘Whoa, yeah.’ … I absolutely love it.”

Waers said the business world is becoming a much smaller place. “Especially the way the economy is today,” she said. “It’s just becoming more and more global.”

China has topped headlines lately with products like food and toys being recalled for poor quality standards, and that fact isn’t lost on Waers, who says quality is critical.

“It’s one of the hardest things about importing products — the quality control issue — because in China they have different standards than we have in the U.S.,” she said. “So, it’s just really making sure that we communicate our standards and that the factories and the companies that we’re working with overseas understand how important it is to us.”

Mary Dye launched her career hoping to help malnourished people in Third World countries, and she wound up teaching American students to eat without starving or stuffing themselves.

The 2001 Flagler alumna and registered dietician works as a campus nutritionist for New York University’s Health Center. In tandem with a small team of doctors and counselors, Dye tries to help students – many of them with eating disorders – understand why a healthy, but not overly restrictive diet is important.
“They have a very fearful relationship with food,” she said. “It can get frustrating at times, but then you really think about the complications of the illness and how troubled these patients are. A lot of control issues come out through food.”

Dye said it’s easy for Americans to think of nutrition as an almost indulgent, unimportant area of study because they learn about food to lose weight rather than get healthy. In a culture rife with fad weight loss regimens, celebrity diet tips and wildly popular cooking shows, it becomes easier to see food as an obsession more than a necessity.

“It’s interesting because we live in this culture of excess,” she said. “As a reaction to being in this culture – where you’re almost set up to gain weight, honestly – these people [with eating disorders] are just approaching it differently. They’re going the opposite way and resisting food.”

But in poor countries, Dye added, many people still struggle to get enough to eat. That situation was Dye’s interest when she studied anthropology at Flagler and entered the public health nutrition master’s program at the University of North Carolina.

“I really wanted to work in something using my anthropology background,” Dye said. “I was very interested in cultures, how nutrition relates to other nations and the different problems people are facing around the world.”

Later, she interned with UNICEF and studied their transition to infant growth charts based on breast-fed, rather than formula-fed, infants. The charts help UNICEF dieticians determine whether babies around the world are getting proper nutrition.

As Dye’s nutrition career continued, she entered policy work in New York City that gave her firsthand experience with malnutrition issues here in the States, including local agriculture initiatives that bring fresh produce to low-income communities and menu advice for daycare programs.

“We were trying to get them to allow people to use food stamps at farmer’s markets,” Dye said. “A lot of these people live in what we refer to as ‘food deserts.’ The neighborhoods have nothing but fast food.”

She hasn’t traveled to Third World countries yet, but Dye said she loves being an advocate for healthy food – and she loves watching people get better, whether they need to lose or gain weight.

“When I see girls come from being at war with their bodies to appreciating them and all they can do, that’s amazing,” she said. “Food has become a side note, when really it nourishes us and makes possible everything we want to do.”