{"id":4893,"date":"2009-01-26T07:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-26T07:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/dirtbags-weathers-serves-up-the-heat\/"},"modified":"2009-01-26T07:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-01-26T07:21:00","slug":"dirtbags-weathers-serves-up-the-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/dirtbags-weathers-serves-up-the-heat","title":{"rendered":"Dirtbags’ Weathers Serves Up The Heat"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The Dirtbags’ season is still almost a month away, but skipper Mike Weathers was already cooking Saturday morning at the ESPN Zone in Downtown Disney, one of nine participants in the Coaches’ Cook-Off Classic.  <\/span>Managers from as far away as Santa Barbara and san Diego traded in their uni’s for aprons to come see who could serve up the best eats.  <\/span>ESPN Zone’s head chef cooked a sun-dried tomato chicken penne, and then each coach tried to mimic his dish; then, using a wide array of ingredients and sauces, they had to come up with their own creation.<\/p>\n

Weathers was visibly nervous before he stepped up to the chef’s station.  <\/span>“You’ll be fine, Weathers,” said coach Rousey from Northridge, before feeding him some false, pesto-related tips.  <\/span><\/p>\n

“I’m more nervous than before an opener against coach Gillespie,” Weathers said, referring to UC Irvine’s Mike Gillespie.  <\/span>“Usually you see sports highlights—well, this is my lowlight.  <\/span>I’m a steak and grill guy.  <\/span>I mean I still throw my pasta against the side of the fridge to see if it’s done.”<\/p>\n

After finishing his dishes and wiping the sweat from his brow, Weathers presented his meal to the judges—he made the required copy-cat plate, and his own creation, a shrimp with bow tie pasta and spicy sauce meal that his wife (Charlotte) saw and said, and I quote, “Oh, that looks terrible.”  <\/span><\/p>\n

“Yeah, I think it’s going to be used against us in recruiting,” Weathers responded, before coach Gillespie accused him of taking signals from his wife while at the grill.  <\/span>Charlotte tried to comfort him, saying, “The ingredients taste good…separately.”<\/p>\n

Weathers and Pepperdine coach Steve Rodriguez later complained to the judges that Gillespie was getting an unfair advantage by going over his allotted time.<\/p>\n

At the end of the morning, Weathers failed to take home a top prize (or a bottom one), but did receive a nice, polished medal of participation.  <\/span>The top winner was USC coach Chad Kreuter (Gillespie’s son-in-law), and Gillespie “won” the Kitchen Nightmare award, getting a miniature fire extuingisher instead of a trophy.  <\/span>UCSB’s Bob Brontsema won the creativity award for spelling out “UCSB” in bell peppers on the edge of his plate.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Relieved that he hadn’t won the Nightmare prize, Weathers and his family left ESPN Zone smiling and, I suspect, ready to trade his chef’s hat back in for a baseball cap.<\/p>\n


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The Dirtbags’ season is still almost a month away, but skipper Mike Weathers was already cooking Saturday morning at ESPN Zone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4893\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4893"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4893"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}