Loyal, dedicated, passionate, conscientious, hard-working, diligent, compassionate and detailed. Dave Loveton covered all the bases in his professional life as a long-time sports writer in Santa Barbara and as the sports information specialist for Santa Barbara City College.
Dave is being honored posthumously for his many years of faithful service to the sports community. We lost him to cancer in 2021.
He started working in sports journalism in Santa Barbara at the independent student-run Daily Nexus newspaper at UCSB. He served as the sports editor before landing a part-time job at the News-Press in 1981.
Among the appreciable qualities Dave brought to his profession were strong work ethic, attention to detail and forming trusting relationships with the coaches and athletes he covered.
When he first started working on the News-Press sports department, he not only covered games and worked the desk, but worked a second job on the graveyard shift at the Safeway grocery store.
He became a full-time sports writer in 1984 and worked at the newspaper for nearly 25 years. He was the beat writer for SBCC and Westmont College and treated their teams as if they were the only programs in town.
In addition, he wrote a golf column and received the plum assignments of covering the Lakers in the NBA Finals, the Dodgers in the 1988 World Series, Super Bowl XXII in San Diego and a U.S. Open Golf Championship.
Dave was thorough in his work at the paper; his attention to detail and accuracy made the section better.
He brought those qualities and his love for sports to his new job as the sports information specialist at SBCC, where he worked for nearly 18 years. He was hired by SBART Hall of Famer Mike Warren.
The school’s athletic department reaped the rewards of Dave’s stellar coverage of everything Vaqueros. His press releases on SBCC events were a blessing to sports editors— just copy, paste and publish — and his stat keeping was spot on. He maintained the community college’s website and made sure it was always up to date.
Dave’s job also allowed him to use his pleasant-sounding baritone voice as the public address announcer for several SBCC sporting events, a part of the job he truly enjoyed.
Dave loved Santa Barbara and showed his appreciation by doing community service work. He coached basketball at elementary schools, officiated basketball, volleyball and flag football for elementary and middle school kids, officiated basketball at the Carpinteria Boys & Girls Club and at the Santa Barbara Special Olympics basketball tournament.
He regularly gave blood at the Blood Bank and participated in walk/runs with the local chapter of the American Diabetes Association.
He was a special and caring person in our community.
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