Get to Know: Manya Makoski

Meet Manya Makoski, a midfielder from Trumbull, CT who is now living her dream of playing professional soccer playing for the LA Sol. From Gatorade State Player of the Year in 2001 to a stellar career at Arizona State University to numerous championships with US Youth National teams, she has quietly been one of the nation’s best soccer players.

She is part of the dominant backline that helped the LA Sol to a .5 goals against average in the regular season, and helped Karina LeBlanc post 12 shutouts in the season, good for best in the league. Next year, she will be back in LA ready to start a new season, with the same goal she, along with the rest of the team, had in mind last year: to win the WPS Championship.

For now, she is back at home in Connecticut, playing in coed teams, and training on her own to become stronger, fitter, and better in time for pre-season, which starts in February.

I got to ask her 22 questions (because she is #22) so fans could get to know her off the field a little better. It is always nice to know how players are off the pitch…Enjoy!

1. What was the best moment of your ASU career?

Making it to the NCAA tourney twice, becoming an Academic All American, and being awarded the ASU Coach Bill Kajikawa Outstanding Female Graduate Award and ASU Sparky Awards Female Scholar of the Year Award

2. Who from Hollywood would you like to meet?

Gerard Butler

3. What’s in your iPod?

A little bit of everything (except country)… MJ, Lady Gaga, NKOTB, James Morrison, Britney Spears, David Guetta, Timbaland, Far East Movement, Lil Wayne, Eric Hutchinson, Pat Monahan, Justin Nozuka, Joshua Radin, Matt Wertz, Matt Nathanson, Deadmau5, Akon, Craig David, Trans Siberian Orchestra

4. Do you have a favorite holiday?

My birthday

5. Guilty pleasure?

Starbucks Chai tea lattes

6. Who was the funniest person (or people) on the team last season?
Aya was definitely the team clown

7. What was your first soccer team called and what were its colors?
The Smurfs…  Ironically we were blue and white.

8. If the goalkeeper on your team got a red card or injured after the 3 subs were made and you were still on the field, would you go in goal?

Without a doubt.  I love playing in goal.  I am actually pretty good.

9. What’s your favorite movie(s)?

The Hangover, Wedding Crashers, Old School, Aladdin

10. What do you do when you’re not training?

Watching FSC, writing, studying for my real estate class, practicing my hip hop dance moves, watching It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia

11. When you were a kid, what was the most trouble you got into?

I never got into trouble.  I was an angel.  My brothers got blamed for everything I did.

12. What nicknames have you had throughout your life?

Monz, Monster, MJ, Eminem, Mañana

13. Do you have any special memory with or of a Sol fan from last season?

All of the fans were so great.  We couldn’t have done it without them.

14. What is your favorite food to eat?

Veggie burrito or gnocchi

15. Name your all-time favorite soccer player(s).

Ashley Cole, Lampard, Drogba, Essien, Joe Cole, Deco, John Terry, Ballack, Anelka… can you tell I am a Chelsea fan??

16. Name your favorite athlete of another sport.

Lance Armstrong

17. Has there been a player that made you stop and think “Wow, I’m really playing with/against them!”

All of my teammates from the Sol and all of the players in the WPS

18. If you could appear in any TV commercial, what product would you endorse? (Mia Hamm did Pert Plus. Julie Foudy did Bud Light.)

Hair dye

19. Name one interesting fact about yourself that you wouldn’t mind fans knowing.

I’m very ambidextrous.  In almost everything.

20. Give any thoughts on the next WPS season.

I am really excited because the level of play is going to get better and better. The support we get from our fans and the media will also increase, which is what we need to keep these league alive.

21. You have won the regular season title, but lost a tough game to Sky Blue FC. Do you feel that this has sown the seeds of a coast-to-coast rivalry with this club?

Against every team we played we had grown some sort rivalry. But since we lost to Sky Blue in the final, we will want to definitely beat them.

22. Has the defeat to Sky Blue FC made you hungrier to knock this club off their perch and in what ways?

Definitely.  We wanted to win the regular season title and the championship final.  Hopefully next year we can accomplish that.

Podcast: Interview with Gabby Reece

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:33 — 11.5MB)

Gabby Reece possesses a look that conveys both athleticism and feminine beauty. At 6’3”, she is a dominate force on and off the pro beach volleyball circuit, and an inspiration to all who meet her.

California born, Gabby was raised on St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. She didn’t take up volleyball until in the 11th grade when she and her mother moved to St. Petersburg, Florida. Gabby won an athletic scholarship to Florida State University where she majored in Communications and played two seasons of volleyball before accepting offers from the modeling world in New York.  Gabby returned to FSU campus and set two school volleyball records before being inducted into the college’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

Gabby trained hard to hone her skills in 2-person beach volleyball and competed domestically in the 1999-2000 Olympic Challenge Series and the 1999-2000 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour. In 1997, competing with the best global beach volleyball players ever assembled, Gabby’s 4-person team took first place at the first-ever Beach Volleyball World Championships.

Gabby was Nike’s first female athlete to design a shoe, and Nike’s first-ever female cross-training spokesperson (1993-99). The Air GR was the first women’s shoe to outsell men’s and outsell the Air Jordan.

Gabby’s skills cross over onto the big screen where she played a pro beach volleyball player in ‘Cloud Nine’ with Burt Reynolds (2004), a guest star in ‘North Shore’ (2004) and as a physical trainer in the film ‘Gattica’ (1997). She’s graced the cover of Sports Illustrated for Women, Travel & Leisure Golf, Women’s Sports & Fitness, Outside, Elle, Shape, Self, Harpers’ Bazaar, Volleyball, Fitness, Life, Vogue, Experience Life and People.

Gabby is currently the creator  of The Honey Line, a fast-paced, magazine-style program that delivers realistic solutions to women’s questions concerning style, health & fitness, home, food and the environment. She’s also married to surfer Laird Hamilton and is the mother of two young daughters and a step-daughter.

Passionate about fitness, Gabby has produced and released numerous  exercise DVDs and health & fitness products. She’s a spokesperson for Simply Nutrilite, a line of vitamins and supplements and her fitness tips can be found on the pages of Shape magazine where she is a monthly contributing editor.

Gabby can also be seen hosting various TV broadcasts for ESPN, Discovery and others. She won a huge following by taking risks road-luging, white water kayaking, drag racing, surfing, and sky diving on “MTV Sports” and “The Extremists with Gabrielle Reece” in the 90’s, and she was a commentator at the 1998 Goodwill Games.

Women’s Sports & Fitness named Gabby one of the ‘20 Most Influential Women in Sports’ in 1997, the same year Crown published the book, “Big Girl in the Middle,” which Gabby co-wrote with Karen Karbo.

To learn even more about this athletic superstar, and all-around Pretty Tough gal, listen to our candid interview.  Gabby talks  about her incredible career, her advice to girls pursuing athletics in school or for a career and what she thinks about the evolution of women in sport.

Snowboarder Kimmy Fasani talks to Transworld

Pretty Tough Team Rider Kimmy Fasani will be appearing in the new all-girl shred flick STANCE. While she rehabs a tweaked spine up in Mammoth, Transworld Snowboarding sat her down to answer some questions. Kimmy talks about the film, her recent injury and her education.

TW: How did your filming go for the new all-girl movie Stance? 

KF: Filming for Stance opened up doors that I never thought would be possible. I was excited but also a little skeptical, that I could dedicate a lot of my season to filming. After X-games [sponsor] DC gave me the okay to go out to Utah and hang with the Stance crew for a couple weeks—which turned into a couple months. As soon as I showed up, we headed into the backcountry and to my surprise that’s where we did most of our filming from February until April. The guys had a lot to teach me because I had only taken my sled out in springtime conditions. I also didn’t have too much experience in powder, so I had a lot to learn in a short period of time.

Throughout the few months I was with the crew, I was introduced to all new aspects of snowboarding. We hit cliffs, pillows, and jumps all over the Wasatch. A couple of the highlights throughout the season include hitting the Heber jump, which is about 60ft long with a gnarly in-run. Another highlight would be the trip to Jackson Hole to meet up with Travis Rice and Dan Brisse.

TW: How are you recovering from your back injury?

KF: My back is healing up nicely. I’m in my 6th week of recovery and have been discharged from Physical Therapy, which means I can start pacing myself at the gym. Here’s what I did to hurt my back: I was out in Utah trying to wrap up the last couple weeks of filming for Stance and we were trying to find cool, unique shots to add to the movie. The weather was milky so we (Jenny Jones, Lisa Filzmoser, Raewyn Reid, Molly Aguirre, and I) went to Park City to hit a dirt gap. As we were building the jump and filling in the landing we tested the run-in for speed for this 30ft step down. My board was running slow, so I knew I had to go a little faster than everyone else. The landing only had about 5 feet of tranny and then we would ride into a groomed run that was dead flat. After a couple more speed runs I was feeling pretty confident that I could hit the landing. In my mind I was thinking, “Just don’t come up short.” I decided to guinea the gap, and as I dropped in my adrenaline was pumping. As I popped off the take off I knew I was in trouble. I was going a little too fast and popped a little too much. My back foot landed in the last foot of tranny and the compression made me wash out onto my butt. Everything would have been fine, but as my momentum brought me onto the groomed run my butt hit the grooming curb.  Immediately I felt my back crunch and I had the wind knocked out of me. I had Molly Aguirre take me to the clinic in Park City and sure enough I had compression fractured my T11 vertebra. The next day was my birthday and I had to make the 8-hour drive back to Mammoth with a fractured back. No fun! Once I got back to Mammoth I got a second opinion. The doctor in Mammoth informed me that along with the fractured vertebra, my 12th rib was out of place on my right side.

My recovery started with four weeks of physical therapy, where I walked on a treadmill in a pool, did some stretching, got massage work, and did some core exercises. Once I was discharged from physical therapy I started riding my road bike, walking my dog, swimming at the pool, and doing yoga. I should be back to normal within a couple weeks.

TW: Lots of riders blow off their education during their shred years, but you got a degree.

KF: College was always a huge goal for me, despite the fact that I was a snowboarder, so after I graduated from high school I moved down to Mammoth and started attending Cerro Coso Community College. My goal was to get an Associates Degree, then consider getting my Bachelors Degree when I had more time. In order to make the community college work with my schedule I took both online and classroom classes. I also only went to school summer and fall from 2002-2005. After I graduated with my Associates degree from Cerro Coso in Mammoth in December 2005, I decided to take a year off. However, in June of 2006 I got antsy and decided that finishing my Bachelors degree “now” would be better than putting it off for later. I had to make time for school if I wanted to finish. So in July of 2006, I registered for school at University of Phoenix online. Committing to this next level of college was not easy, especially with the random schedules we have as snowboarders but UOP made traveling and education possible. I could be anywhere in the world and as long as I had Internet I could submit assignments. I only had to take one class at a time, and each class was only 5 weeks long. I could take breaks in between each 5-week class, and I had 7 years to finish my degree through UOP.  This school made education possible for those of us that are too busy to think about school.

Juggling snowboarding and school was difficult because I wanted to put 100% into both. In the end, I couldn’t do that so I ended up giving both school and snowboarding 50% each. Also, committing to the schoolwork while my friends were out partying or even snowboarding was really difficult because I knew I was missing out on other opportunities. It was also common for me to get extremely stressed if I could not find Internet on trips because not being online could cost me my grade in these classes. I had to sacrifice a lot to get my degree but all my hard work paid off when I graduated in July of 2008 from UOP with a 3.76 GPA and a Bachelor in Science. Now that I have a Bachelors degree, I have definitely thought about going back to get my Masters. However, I am in no rush to continue my education, so I may wait until I have a job outside of snowboarding and see how necessary a Masters [degree] is.

For the rest of Kimmy Fasani’s interview – visit TW Snowboarding.

Questions for: Billie Jean King

October 29, 2008 – It’s not just Michael Phelps and Nastia Liukin who are raking in athlete endorsement deals. Tennis icon Billie Jean King has been starring in a string of  recent TV commercials.

Check out this WSJ interview with one of the winningest female players in tennis history.