The Santa Barbara Athletic Round Table will be inducting seven new members into its Hall of Fame on Monday, Sept. 18. The Induction Class of 2023 includes four athletes, a coach, a community leader and a special achievement honoree.
This is the last in a series of stories about this year’s inductees.
John Zant has covered the local sports scene with diligence and creative flair for the last 55 years — the first 38 with the Santa Barbara News-Press and the last 17 with the Santa Barbara Independent.
He grew up in La Cañada and competed in football and track at St. Francis High School. He scored 11 touchdowns for the Golden Knights in 1963, when they won the CIF-Southern Section AAA football championship in a game played at the Los Angeles Coliseum.
John attended UCSB from 1964 to 1968, studied English and anthropology, played intramural sports and served as sports editor of the yearbook. He was hired in 1968 by News-Press sports editor Philip Patton, who was inducted into the Round Table Hall of Fame posthumously in 1977.
“Dad hired John despite his lack of experience on the strong recommendation of UCSB sports information director Donn Bernstein,” said Mark Patton, Zant’s longtime colleague at the News-Press. “Little did Dad know that he was bringing aboard the man who would become my mentor.”
John covered many of the greatest moments in Santa Barbara’s sports history, starting with Dos Pueblos’ 1971 CIF-SS AAA basketball championship. The game was played at the Sports Arena, adjacent to the Coliseum where he’d won his own CIF title just seven years earlier.
He also covered Sam Cunningham’s four-touchdown performance at the 1973 Rose Bowl. He reported on the holiday football classic for 27 straight years, from 1969 to 1995. He also covered the Olympics seven times, beginning with the tragic Munich Games of 1972, as well as three Super Bowls, three World Series, and numerous NBA Finals.
John was nominated for the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for a 10-part, slice-of-life series he penned about his walk along the coast of Santa Barbara County. He wrote about what he encountered while interviewing the people he met as he covered the entire 110 miles, from the mouth of the Santa Maria River to Carpinteria’s Rincon Point.
John has also received numerous awards from the Associated Press Sports Editors Association. One was for a four-part series he wrote in 1973 which explored the participation of women and girls in athletics at a time when the CIF and NCAA had yet to include them. His advocacy for gender equity gained tangible results when he began a stint as the News-Press sports editor in 1989. Under his guidance, the newspaper reported regularly on teams and games that other media scantily covered.
He also became one of the first full-time, traveling beat writers for a collegiate women’s basketball team. He chronicled the nine consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances of coach Mark French’s UCSB program from 1997 to 2005.
John’s thrice-weekly column was also a popular read for the Santa Barbara community. And although he left the News-Press in 2007, he continued writing a weekly column, along with other features, for the Independent beginning in March of that year.
John and his wife, Kathleen, are the parents of six grown children and eight grandkids.
The Class of 2023 includes Alex Mack (San Marcos High), Sami Hill (Dos Pueblos), Paula Charest Lilly (Bishop Diego) and Jenna Ridgway Corliss (San Marcos) being honored for their achievements as athletes; Greg Patton, a Bishop Diego and UCSB alum, recognized for his remarkable coaching career; San Marcos alum Harvey Bottlesen, who founded the Santa Barbara Tennis Club, is the community leader, and journalist John Zant, a UCSB alum, is being inducted for his seven decades of providing quality sports writing for the community.
In addition, the SBART is honoring one its founders, 96-year-old Bill Bertka. He is a L.A. Lakers legend, having been a part of 10 championship teams as an assistant coach and consultant.
The SBART Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will be held at the Cabrillo Arts Pavilion. The event is sold out.
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