Gamekeeping, Field Sports and Country Pursuits

Archive for the ‘United States’ Category

A fan of any game, may it be baseball, basketball or hockey, would like to strut some stuff that shows they favor that team or player. Through this, they could show their intense devotion to their hockey heroes not just during a game but also while they go on with their daily life. While some would only go for apparel, a lot would like to go the whole way and get the whole ensemble including accessories.

In the field of hockey, there are a lot of accessories that a fan could go for when they want to show their love for a team. There are a lot that could be found that they could wear on their person like watches and even earrings. But, if they want to go all the way and make the ultimate statement of being a complete fan, they could get stuff that would even go as far as their bedroom.

You could snuggle in your bed under a royal plush blanket throw with soft-rounded corners with team color border. The blanket is made of high quality fibers that would give out superior durability as well as ultimate warmth and comfort.

If you are an avid collector of hockey caps as you are a fan of the game, you would appreciate the practicality of the perfect curve cap rack 24 system. The rack which has a 5-feet cord and 12 patented cap clips could hold 24 caps that you might have collected of your favorite hockey teams. It could be hanged on walls and doors or looped over closet rods.



Surfing the net or browsing your computer could even bring you immense fan-satisfaction because there are available neoprene mouse pads featuring your favorite hockey team’s colors and displays either the logo or emblem of the team.



Your hockey team fanaticism could even extend to storing your checks as there are now embroidered leather checkbook holders designed for top tear checks that come with a plastic check cover, four card slots, two inner compartments and 6 photo sleeves.



Even your dog could show some team spirit with the nylon team colored dog collars with plastic clips and a metal loop for the leash. You couldn’t even spare your Christmas tree because there are also frosted glass ornaments bearing team logos.



Of course, there are the more conventional accessories that you could put on like ladies, men and kids watches and even earrings. The ladies watches usually are of brass with gold accent casings and brushed chrome finish with stainless steel band and specially packaged in a tin gift box. The men’s watches are either with stainless steel or leather bands and features team logos and stored in black tin. Kids’ future star watches have glow in the dark hands and numbers and usually has an adjustable Velcro strap.



Aside from watches, ladies could also show how fiercely devoted they are to their favorite team because there are already available team logo earrings. It’s wearing the team’s logo on a wire on your earlobes with pride.

Because the standard unit of measurement in any outdoor lighting design is the footcandle, government regulations normally specify footcandle minimum requirements for parking lot lighting, and security lighting, and athletic field lighting. One sport that warrants particular attention to footcandle lighting levels is soccer. Because soccer fields have sprung up all over the country with the rising popularity of the game, it is common to find them widely varied in size and function. To effectively light a soccer field, a professional designer or DYI certified electrical installer has to take certain critical factors into consideration before purchasing soccer field lights, mounts, and poles. Sometimes even a professional designer has to consult with an electrician who is familiar with local municipal outdoor lighting codes, and sometimes a DYI in spite of local expertise has to call the US Soccer foundation for recommendations on which soccer field lighting equipment will give a given location optimal foot candle spread with minimal glare and strict regulation of light pollution.

To save a step for the contractor and to reduce the margin of error for the DIY installer, RLL Design streamlines this information into a consolidated set of expert tools and consultation services offered for free through our online forum and complimentary over the phone to serious inquirers and clients. We also inventory a complete selection of soccer field lights, equipment, and mounting accessories to optimize game visibility for players and to maintain your facility in good standing with governing compliance standards. Because so many games are played at night, player safety is foremost in consideration when developing a soccer field lighting system. To produce clear visibility without blinding glare, lighting experts must mathematically determine the precise level of foot-candles needed for the size of a particular field. They must also take into account whether or not spectators will be watching the game, as this constitutes a second layer of light that must be evenly spread over the field.

One foot candle is equal to one lumen of light spread evenly over a space of one square foot. Special equipment is required to measure footcandle levels, and normally only professional electricians have access to this equipment. This is one area where neither DIY electricians nor outdoor lighting designers relatively new to sports lighting ever want to cut corners. Municipal codes are strict in almost every part of the country, and dark sky laws now extend from coast to coast requiring athletic field lighting be kept on the field and out of neighboring homes and businesses. By taking the time to ensure your proposed system meets with all legal requirements and fulfills the recommendations of the US Soccer Foundation, you can provide your client or your own organization with an insulating factor against liabilities that could result from injuries on an improperly lighted soccer field.

Light levels on soccer fields will vary greatly depending on field size, status as a practice field or game field, and the number of spectators viewing the game. Here is where RLL Design can offer such a powerful competitive advantage when it comes to determining just what should go into a system. By doing the calculations for our clients, we help even the most advanced mathematicians double check their work, and we help DYI installers with limited time and resources save a step.

Voltage also factors heavily into determining which soccer field lights will produce ideal, glare free visibility on the field. RLL Design sports lights are regulated with sophisticated magnetic transformers that control voltage levels and produce superior electron flow. Our specialists will help you assess the needs of the field and choose from a range of multi-tap ballasts ranging from 120, 208, 240, and 277 volts. Contractors installing lights in professional soccer stadiums can also obtain 480-volt ballasts for game and spectator lighting. Stadiums of this size normally require as much as 75 footcandles of continuous, horizontal target illumination, compared to the mere 30 footcandles required by a local municipal or schoolyard practice field.

If you are a contractor, working with a vendor like RLLD who can supply you with lights for either scenario gives you a strong competitive advantage over other firms who may only have access to fixtures appropriate for a certain sized field only.

Regardless of your level of expertise, it is always a good idea to call an RLL Design specialist to ensure your voltage calculations have correctly matched your lamp type to your ballast. Incorrect estimates can create hazards and consume more power than necessary. However, when properly ballasted and fitted on the correctly sized poles, RLL Design soccer field lights will produce a more efficient light than cheaper, competing equivalents. Advanced reflector arrays help the metal halide lamps within the fixtures spread the light more evenly across the field and simultaneously prevent excess spill light from creating light pollution and glare. This makes the game more enjoyable to watch, more safe to play, and eliminates complaints from neighboring businesses and homeowners.

RLL Design, in keeping with recommendations made by the US Soccer Foundation, recommends you use galvanized steel poles to mount your soccer field lights. These poles are more resistant to strong winds and will last longer, protecting investment dollars from replacement costs. To help contractors and DYI installers place their lighting fixtures at the precise, necessary height, RLL Design stocks a full repertoire of mounting assemblies to accommodate effective illumination of any size field from the recommended distances from sidelines and fences.

RLL Design specialists will help both professionals and end users research regulatory codes, make all necessary calculations to determine optimal lighting levels, and supply all fixtures, poles, mounts, and accessories needed to fully light a soccer field of any size, anywhere in the United States.

Though not always flying under the banner of ‘hypnosis’, these days almost all top level sports men and women – and the elite mental coaches who work with them – use some form of hypnosis to aid them in performing at their very best.

Through its unique ability to harness the power of the subconscious mind, hypnosis is able to assist the sports person in achieving some really amazing results.

In the world of modern competitive sports, where national pride and huge sums of money are often at stake, it just makes sense that the sports person is able to utilise every legal means in order to obtain real results.

Indeed, hypnosis has a very long history in connection with sports of all kinds.

For years, the Soviet Olympic team used it in order to give them the edge, and because of their success, it didn’t take long for other teams to rapidly incorporate hypnosis into their own elite athlete training with impressive results.

Nowhere are results more important than in the field of competitive sports. Any strategy or approach that fails to produce champion results is quickly discarded, while those that do show themselves to have real value are rapidly incorporated into training.

The list of positive advantages that sports men and women gain from incorporating hypnosis into their training is varied and long. Benefits include enabling the athlete to remain calm under pressure, maintain focus and eliminate distractions, improve mental stamina and increase endurance, ease pre-competition nerves, as well as improve the athlete’s attitude and motivation.

Very often, the athlete or mental coach uses words such as ‘entering the zone’ or ‘creative visualization’. In essence, what this means is that the sports person is able to access and work directly with their subconscious — that driver of abilities and the powerhouse of beliefs, in order to properly program it for accomplishment and success.

Since he was very young, champion golfer Tiger Woods, for example, has used hypnosis on a regular basis. His mental coach and family friend, Jay Brunza introduced the golfer to this powerful tool when Woods was just thirteen years old.

States Woods: ‘We worked on a way to visualize the target and pull it back into my hands and body and let my subconscious react. That’s what’s best for me.’ So successful was this strategy that: ‘It is inherent in what I do now’, states Woods.

In the UK, WBC Heavyweight Champion Frank Bruno and WBC Super Middleweight Champion Nigel Benn both employed hypnosis in order to perform at their peak.

In his 1996 WBO Super Middleweight title fight, Chris Eubank was defeated by Steve Collins who attributed much of the victory to the fact that he had used hypnosis in his mental preparation for the fight.

Collins had worked with former champion bodybuilder Tony Quinn and was hypnotically programmed to deliver two punches for every one thrown by his competitor. In the fight, Eubank threw 300 punches, compared to over 600 from Collins.

But you don’t need to be a professional athlete or sportsperson in order to harness the wonderful power of hypnosis. You too can learn to use it to enhance your game, allowing you to fully enjoy yourself and the results you get from your sporting hobby.

If you want to be at the top of your game, it makes sense to seek out a properly qualified hypnotherapist, someone who has both interest in and experience of working in the field of sports hypnosis.

Do that and you too can put yourself into ‘the zone’ and become even more of a winner!