They may be rivals on the field, but off the field, on most Mondays at noon during the school year, local coaches and student athletes and supporters come together as a community where sports are the topic of discussion at Harry’s Plaza Café. This weekly press luncheon has been hosted by the Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table (SBART) for the past 53 years.
It all began with the founding of the Round Table organization by civic leaders Jerry Harwin and Caesar Uyesaka. They had been the operators of the Santa Barbara Dodgers, a Class A minor-league baseball team. When the team was moved to Bakersfield after the 1967 season, Harwin and Uyesaka shifted their focus to create an organization that would offer recognition and support to Santa Barbara’s indigenous sports teams and athletes.
A flyer publicizing a 1971 SBART luncheon featuring Jim Ryun as guest speaker | Credit: Courtesy
The inaugural SBART event was a Hall of Fame banquet on June 22, 1968. The first notables selected to the community sports shrine were tennis star Keith Gledhill; baseball slugger Gene Lillard; Lou Tsoutsouvas, a Santa Barbara Don football player who became known as Stanford’s Iron Man for playing 60 minutes per game; Clarence Schutte, who coached the Dons to three CIF football championships; and Max Fleischmann, a benefactor of local sports, among other things.
