Catcher dreams of going pro

FEATURE

Aliyah Ramirez of Los Medanos College
30 Mar. 2023

the lmc experience

the MARCH newsletter

Since Bubba Rocha was young, he was drawn to baseball–from watching his favorite players, Buster Posey and Yadier Molina succeed on the field. Initially, he saw the sport as a pastime, but it was not until he began to play competitively, that it evolved into a dream of going pro. 

Within the competitive sports environment, Rocha played in school and travel ball, competing at the same level and sometimes better than other players around his age, leading him to “never look back.”

Part of the Los Medanos Baseball Program since he was a freshman, Rocha continues to stay motivated for his team, coaches and parents. Consistently working to better his game and learn from past teammates, Rocha aspires to reach the D1 level and secure the chance to play in the Major Leagues. 

“I compare myself to past teammates and see how far they can get. It shows me that going to the D1 level is possible,” said Rocha. “When I see these things being an achievable goal and other people are able to do it, you don’t have to be superhuman to go D1.”

Working towards becoming a well-rounded player is not easy, especially when contrasting opinions about oneself overtake. The transition from high school to college baseball was a drastic change for Rocha as the competition heightened. 

Playing at the junior college level, Rocha initially viewed each game as a “last chance,” fixated on his mistakes instead of his accomplishments. However, as a more experienced player, Rocha focuses on being more comfortable on the field and calming his mindset. 

“Don’t let the game speed you up,” described Rocha. “Find ways to bring yourself back to what we call green, which is ‘be calm.’”

Rocha’s role on the team has evolved in his second year–from a designated hitter to leading roles both offensively and defensively. Now, Rocha plays as a catcher with a secondary position as an outfielder but did not know this would be where his season would begin.

The team faced multiple injuries at the top of the season, leaving vacant positions and quick replacements. Rocha was now behind the plate as he stepped up to be a catcher. Working with his assistant coach took him out of his comfort zone and built up the skills in his new position.

“He completely changed how I thought about catching, and I feel that improved how I received the ball and my whole perspective on catching,” said Rocha.

Halfway through their 2022-23 season, Rocha describes the start as a “learning curve,” with a new coaching staff and roles to fill on the team. Yet, despite the changes, Los Medanos holds a 10-6 record, leading with the most wins in the Bay Valley Conference. 

While adapting to the new season, Matt Lisle became the new head coach in his 23rd year of coaching. After graduating as a past LMC student and growing up within the athletic department, it meant a lot for Lisle to return to a familiar team.  

Lisle plans to incorporate strong values into the baseball program, focusing on developing “tough-minded, fearless competitors and [to] train them to be leaders for excellence and significance.” Reflected in Rocha’s current role from player to one of the captains of the team, he has been able to be the leader he once looked up to when he began. 

“Bubba has a lot of strengths, but one that stands out to me is his servant leadership,” said Lisle. “Even as a captain, he approaches leadership with the attitude of helping his teammates get better.”

When describing his team, Rocha sees them as “family” and built on a dynamic to “play for each other,” as he knows how to react and hold players accountable for playing in a strong season.

As LMC’s baseball performance continues strong, Rocha plans to commit to a school by this summer. He has gathered attention from college coaches for his performances offensively and defensively, with his top school being UC Riverside. However, he tries to “not be satisfied” and to “keep progressing through the season” as he works to take the sport he loves to the Major Leagues.

Tsunami of Spices

FEATURE

Muskaan Adeel of Los Medanos College
30 Nov. 2022

TSUNAMI OF SPICES WEBSITE

• Check out Tsunami of Spices on Instagram

the NOVEMBER newsletter

Every kitchen has a heritage, and every recipe has a writer. Afshan Khan, CEO of Tsunami of Spices, created her brand and climbed to success. Born and raised in Jordan and Pakistan, her business represents her journey as an immigrant and the immense amount of spices and combinations her family used to make their food filled with a “tsunami of spices.”

Since childhood, watching her elders cook traditional and savory foods, along with their techniques of crafting, enhancing, and presenting the food on the table, developed her interest in the culinary world. She loves hosting and getting appreciation from others for her food.

“It was like playing with different colored ingredients and spices, skillfully picturing them on a platter. My cooking style can be described as energetic, unique, and balanced, with an epicure aptitude,” said Khan. “I grew up in a family where the kitchen was eternally the meeting place of the home, and good food was appreciated with the memories surrounding it.”

Khan developed a creative interest in food blogging during the 2020 lockdown. Being stuck at home, she wanted to express her interest in cooking on a broader scale. Countless days and nights working and displaying her recipes gained publicity fast.

“Before I even started my blog, I wanted to find a way to express my creativity in food. I wanted to spread the fusion of common foods such as fast food, pasta, and rice and put my own twist on it,” explained Khan. “Many of my viewers asked me if I had a catering business, and that thought always remained in my head.”

After lockdown mandates were lifted, Khan started hosting small get-togethers, but her outlook on her business changed in May of last year. The thought of catering from her blogs came back up, and it was a question mark. She was hesitant to step foot into catering, but when she did, she was surprised at the growth.

“I had just set up my food display before I called everyone to eat when lots of my friends came up and briefly mentioned why I didn’t share this food with the world,” said Khan.

And that’s where her journey truly began, a first birthday party, boosted her publicity fast and the calls started coming in.

“I was hesitant about doing events like this, but setting up for that birthday party, I enjoyed the way I made the food stick with a theme, and the extra decor I DIY’d also made the process enjoyable. Seeing the appreciation that event brought me, I sat down with my husband, and he told me to go for it, and so I did,” said Khan.

With her business growing quickly, Khan created her own website and customized menu. To stand out from other event planners, she doesn’t only provide the food, but also adds small touches to make the event seem unique and memorable for the customer.

One of her favorite events was a butterfly-themed birthday party. She made a whole display table with the parent’s pictures and decorated it with butterflies. She also made gifts for each of her customers, making them a whole frame with notes from the parent’s family and their wishes for their new addition.

“Each of my events is different. You’ll never see an event that has the same title have the same layout. That’s what makes me excited about each one of my events. Having that difference makes work more exciting,” exclaimed Khan.

Within one year, she has done over 40 events and has been booked in advance for the upcoming year. Her work has been appreciated on multiple social media accounts, such as the Bay Area Halal foodies page on Facebook, personal messages, and support from her customers.

“I wouldn’t have been able to do all this without my customers’ support, especially my husband and family. They all gave me a boost to work and achieve my dreams because, honestly, I would’ve never been able to without their help,” said Khan. “I love my job, and being a part of other people’s memories makes my job even more fun.”

Hard work has made Khan’s business into a corporation. Her work gives customers an insight into brainstorming, recipe testing, photographing, and sharing.

Event planning is Khan’s happy place, and spreading that joy with others is success in her eyes. As she believes food is a way of communicating; the energy we pass on through our cooking nourishes the body and one’s soul.

A visionary in the making

FEATURE

Aliyah Ramirez of Los Medanos College
30 Nov. 2022

the lmc experience

• Check out Luigi Aficial's photography on Instagram

the NOVEMBER newsletter

As the music blazes across the arena of students filling the stands, the lights beam and fireworks shoot toward the sky as the San Jose State University football team runs across the bright green field. Capturing the momentous pregame on film, Luigi Aficial chases behind the players rushing with adrenaline as chills race throughout his body.

For most college students, one football game is no different from the next, but for LMC student Aficial, experiencing San Jose State’s football game brought a bit of a “culture shock” since, for him, it was stepping onto the university field for the first time. As a sports fan all his life, he was inspired to explore opportunities within professional sports in the less traditional sense, outside of a jersey number.

An interest in sports and the creative freedom of photography led Aficial to turn his interest into a passion. Working toward his business administration associates for transfer, Aficial has developed skills in how to manage and organize projects and remain focused on turning his love of the creative arts into a future career.

Aficial picked up his parents’ old camera during his junior year of high school for fun. It had been collecting dust in the closet, so he put it to use shooting a multitude of school and family events, building up his experience, and getting his name out there. It was not until he shot his first sports project, his outlook on photography changed from being more than single images. Instead, he focused on creating a meaningful impact for his audience.

However, with his Filipino family’s custom of focusing one’s career on a practical field, which in most cases is healthcare related, his parents did not see videography as a realistic career. Aficial describes his parents’ mindset of their son’s career to be in nursing, “as the way to get out of your circumstances and to give your family a better life.” This made it harder for them to see the creative industry as a way to reach success.

Determined to make a name for himself, Aficial worked throughout his first years at LMC to save up enough money for a better camera and other photo equipment, while perfecting his craft along the way. By developing his passion into more than a hobby, Aficial’s parents were able to see that a traditional career is not the only way to be successful.

“As a photographer, videographer, it really embodies how I want more Filipinos to broaden their horizons when it comes to career interests,” said Aficial. “You don’t have to rely solely on just your culture to define who you can become as an individual. It’s something that I’m using as motivation to transcend it as well.”

Three years after he posted his first sports edit, his eyes brighten, as he reflects on his journey to continue his passion for creating a new outlook on sports coverage.

Taking players and making their journeys stand out both in and out of the game takes immense creativity. Expressing your individuality with each photo or video is what his inspiration, Cameron Look, does to stand out within the creative industry. A trailblazer as one of the few Asian Americans in the sports field, Look inspired Aficial to use his set of creative skills as a content creator and view sports in another light.

As a self-taught creator, Aficial has worked with more than 200 clients since he first started and had many unexpected opportunities along the way. Many say, ‘friends have the ability to change one’s life,’ and that is exactly what AJ Tinio, creative director at San Jose State University, did for Aficial.

He was given an internship at SJSU and, noticed for his hard work and ability, Aficial continued his progress working in publicity at the college. With each project, from a short edit to a documentary, his main purpose is to impact others through visual storytelling.

“Every time I finish a project or some photos and I send it out to clients it’s like they’re always telling me, ‘man Luigi, I can’t believe what you just did,’ the reactions, they never get old,” said Aficial.

Yet one of the most memorable experiences so far has been working with NFL running back, Joe Mixon for the Cincinnati Bengals.

Shooting two practices and putting it all together with photos and a mixtape, Aficial felt it was important to get his work out there as Mixon was returning from an injury. The goal of the project was to show Mixon’s hard work in trying to get better and healthy for the upcoming season.

“So I was really happy to tell a part of his story. You get to portray people and your ideas and who they are,” said Aficial. “Who they are as individuals and that was one of my most, if not my most meaningful, projects I’ve done.”

Aficial’s process of shooting, editing, and sharing his content has undergone trial and error. Through an improved editing process and other factors he learned at SJSU, he is now able to complete his projects within a day compared to a week.

As a perfectionist with all of his work, he makes his edits stand out from the others through his unique use of colors. “I think that’s a very important thing to differentiate. I use a lot of effects to create vibrance, colors, cinematic,” said Aficial. “I have a specific color palette as well that makes my videos consistent, which adds to my signature.”

Being able to balance both work and school as a college student has been a challenge and working multiple projects at once he experiences times of burnout. However, to avoid losing motivation, he has learned the importance of taking breaks to focus on himself. Taking his mind off the stress, he goes back to playing sports.

As a member of the LMC community for a year and a half, Aficial is focused on finishing up his business major and has been involved in the Honors Program as vice president. He believes if he had gone straight to a four-year university after high school, he would not have been able to discipline himself into finding balance in his workflow, making LMC the right choice for him.

“With LMC you’re basically in command of your own learning. As a community college student, I’ve been able to take command of myself and take command of who I want to become,” said Aficial. “So that when I do transfer, the temptation to stray off course from all of what it is to be a university student, I can make sure that I can balance it all and be confident in that way.”

Working as a freelance photographer and videographer for three years, Aficial has been able to accomplish one of his top goals of shooting college sports before even graduating from LMC. Once he finishes his education, Aficial is confident he will find work in professional sports for the NBA to fulfill his childhood dream of shooting for the Golden State Warriors.

It can be incredibly competitive within the professional sports environment, but Aficial’s skills and individuality set him apart from the rest.

“The reason why I’m able to be in this position today is to just take responsibility and work at your craft,” said Aficial. “What matters is that I put my best effort forward, that the work will show itself, the results will tell itself, and I can live with that because I put maximum effort in what I do.”

As he moves up within the industry, his foundation has been built upon inspirations of representation, culture and gained experiences. To turn his passion into a career, Aficial will capture every step of the way through the crystal lens of his camera.

Author Regina Mason finds place in history

FEATURE

Aliyah Ramirez of Los Medanos College
30 Oct. 2022

the lmc experience

the OCTOBER newsletter

Understanding multiple perspectives comes from more than just a textbook. With this goal in mind, history professors Courtney Goen and Patrick McCarter collaborated with several Los Medanos College programs to produce an event to share stories from the marginalized voices which shaped America.

From what started off as a pipe dream, Goen collaborated with McCarter and the history department to put together a panel discussion on Oct. 6 to increase recognition and understanding of enslavement narratives. In collaboration with the Office of Equity and Inclusion, the Honors program, and the Umoja scholars, they brought guest speaker Regina Mason to share her story, followed by a panel discussion and book signing of the autobiography, “The Life of William Grimes.”

Written as a fugitive slave, Grimes’ autobiography was first published in 1825 capturing his raw experience from a slave to a free man and the injustice acts of slavery.

The original book detailed his journey from being owned by 10 masters to later escaping through the Underground Railroad from Georgia to New York and finally to New Haven, Connecticut. He lost all his property when his master forced him to buy his freedom or risk being returned to slavery. Despite his small success, he had to give up the life he was building.

From discovering her great, great, great grandfather’s narrative, which was buried and out of print, Mason was able to revive Grimes’ story through genealogy and republish his work in 2008 with a new introduction, afterword, and notes.

Grimes’ story has inspired her other work as well, including the making of a documentary film, “Gina’s Journey,” about discovering parts of her past.

“Regina Mason is a very impactful person,” said Goen. “I think that it’s not that her story makes a bad story positive, meaning the sort of treachery that people like William Grimes endured in their lifetime. But I think it does show our connections and why this is important today in 2022.”

Preparations for this event were put together in a matter of three to four weeks and the event was inspired by the narratives present in both Goen’s and McCarter’s curriculum. Those other autobiographical narratives, “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs and “Narratives of the Life of Douglass, an American Slave,” by Frederick Douglass also bring into the classroom the authors’ personal experiences enduring the harsh realities of slavery to shape history.

“African Americans played a key role in the American story. I just want to reaffirm its importance,” said McCarter, adding in the class they, “Basically talk about what these people went through, these were people. They’re not just stories.”

Regina Mason started her journey of discovering her family’s history during childhood when she questioned her identity and heritage. For a class assignment in fifth grade at a predominantly white school, Mason had to do a report on her origin and ancestry. When she asked her mother, she found she was descended from enslaved people.

When having to identify her country of origin, 10-year-old Mason felt uncomfortable sharing with others that she descended from slavery due to the exaggerated stereotypes of Africa being heavily prevalent. However, Mason said she was determined to understand more about where her family came from to teach her two children their family origin, and after 15 years of research, she discovered her family roots stretched across many parts of America.

Some of the information from generations ago, “was brutally painful,” she said. “But I don’t dwell in that pain because if I did, I would lose sight of what the accomplishments were.” Instead, she focuses on the accomplishments to keep herself going.

“That is empowerment because I realized that I extend from great people,” she said. “I extend from people that in spite of their circumstances strove to reach higher, even though they had so many setbacks, but they kept going and I realized that that resilience is in me.”

The event occurred on Oct. 6, 2022, in the student union where students, staff, and community members could attend this free event. While the majority of participants from Goen’s and McCarter’s history classes, a few others attended and all were eager to hear about the enslaved narratives and meet one of the authors from the book.

Madison Fanucchi had read all three narratives addressed at the event and said, “it humanized not only Grimes but also Jacobs. It humanizes Douglass. We hear about them all the time in history and it didn’t feel real until you see someone related to them.”

As Mason shares Grimes’ story as well as her own, she is hoping to share inspiration from these biographies to help others understand history from multiple perspectives.

“If it were not for the stripes on my back which were made while I was a slave, I would in my will leave my skin a legacy to the government, desiring that it might be taken off and made into parchment, and then bind the constitution of glorious happy and free America,” wrote Grimes. “Let the skin of an American slave bind the charter of American Liberty.”