Quartet Of Seniors To Lead Wiregrass Ranch High Softball

(L.-r.): Wiregrass Ranch High senior softball players Kameron Aitken, Alexis Ridolph, Sam Hiley & Jaime Valenta. All four have signed to play college softball next season (Photo by Andy Warrener).

Spring is in the air and so are the softballs at Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH).

The softball team embarks on the 2017 season with high hopes. After going 9-12 a year ago, the 2017 Bulls are preparing for a season with something they haven’t had, well, ever  — a quartet of seniors, all of whom have signed to play collegiate softball.

Veterans Jaime Valenta, Sam Hiley, Alexis Ridolph and Kameron Aitken will lead a Wiregrass squad with hopes of making a little bit of school history.

The Bulls have never won a district title and despite going 9-6 outside the league, were 0-6 last year in Class 8A, District 4, a division filled with some of the better Hillsborough County softball programs.

However, if there was ever a year to make some history, it could be this one. Hiley, Aitken and Valenta were WRH’s top three hitters from 2016, and along with Ridolph make up the top four batters in your typical Bulls lineup.

Valenta provides the speed, and has been the team’s lead-off hitter the last two seasons. The right-handed centerfielder has signed to play at the next level with St. John’s River State College.

As the leadoff hitter, Valenta’s job is to get on base and then steal some, and she did both well last season, batting .377, including .428 over the final eight games. She led the Bulls in triples with four, and stolen bases with 15 in 16 attempts.

Valenta has 32 steals for her career.

“I’m the table-setter,” she says. “I enjoy the leadoff position, I’m more of a contact hitter. My teammates hit me around.”

Aitken, the Bulls’ shortstop, signed her letter of intent in November to play at Florida International University. Aitken brings a .973 fielding percentage over from last season, with just two errors in 21 games at arguably the game’s toughest position.

She hit .422, second on the team, and led the Bulls with four homers and 30 RBI.

Hiley, who is signed to play collegiate ball at Edward-Waters College in Jacksonville, can also play catcher, but is more of a utility player, able to fill in at third base, left field or wherever she is needed.

“I’m like the Band-Aid,” she says.

Hiley’s bat, though, can sometimes leave the opposing pitcher’s arm needing a Band-Aid. Last year, she led the Bulls with 30 hits in 65 official at bats, for a team-best .462 average. She was second on the team in runs scored (19), RBI (21), doubles (5) and homers (2). She carries over a six-game hitting streak from last season into this one, which officially opens Saturday, February 11, at Dunnellon. The Bulls home opener is tonight, February 15, 7:30 p.m., against the Land O’Lakes High Gators.

Hiley’s versatility is shared by Ridolph, who has shifted between second and shortstop in her tenure at Wiregrass and batted .317 last year. A Hillsborough Community College (HCC) signee, she’ll join her older sister Kaitlyn there, for a year.

“It feels unreal, being a senior,” Ridolph said. “I saw my sister and my friends graduate and I still can’t believe it’s actually my senior year now.”

WRH head coach Yamani Vazquez is delighted to have such a talented and experienced senior core, which will be backed up by some impressive younger players like junior Kacie Lemanski (.382) and sophomore Miranda Perez (.379), plus a sophomore-laden pitching staff.

“It’s exciting, it’s a great motivation for the younger players that the seniors are college recruits,” Vazquez says.

It wasn’t too long ago they were just starry-eyed freshmen themselves, fighting older players for playing time.

“I don’t think people consider just how fast the years go by,” Hiley said. “I remember when I was a freshman, Jordan Pierceall (a WRH senior at the time) told us that the years go by faster than you think, and I was looking at her and laughing. Now, I’ve blinked and it’s my senior year.”

Senior night will be held on April 13, against district rival Freedom High.

“I remember decorating for past Senior Nights,” Valenta said. “Now, it’s going to be decorated for us. I probably won’t cry but I don’t know.”

SPOTLIGHT ON… Back To Wellness Center!

Esperansa Nino, D.C.

Back To Wellness Center Chiropractic & Physical Therapy emphasizes the importance of integrated care to help people dealing with pain.

“By combining chiropractic care with physical therapy and massage therapy, we’re not just going to get you out of pain,” says owner Jonathan Hancock, D.C. (Doctor of Chiropractic). “Our goal is to rehabilitate you so the condition doesn’t become chronic.”

Dr. Hancock opened the Back To Wellness Center in 2012 and he says he was pleased to recently welcome a new associate, Esperansa Nino, D.C., to the office.

Patients who visit Back To Wellness will see Dr. Hancock or Dr. Nino for their chiropractic care, and can also see physical therapist Justin Spiegel, DPT (Doctor of Physical Therapy).

“We work closely together and even sit down and brainstorm specific conditions,” says Dr. Hancock. “We give patients a higher level of care because we are all right under the same roof. Patients get better quicker because we’re all on the same page.”

While every treatment plan is tailored to the individual, Dr. Hancock says the Back To Wellness Center often offers shorter treatment plans than patients might expect, because of this integration.

“I would say we average three to five visits to get out of pain for non-traumatic injuries,” he says.

The Back To Wellness Center treats a wide variety of musculoskeletal pains and conditions.

“We cater to all walks of life,” says Dr. Hancock. “From workers comp injuries to auto accidents to athletes.”

He adds that the office accepts all insurance plans and is “in network” for the vast majority of those plans.

“We also offer flexible, affordable cash pay plans, and work with CareCredit financing, too,” he says.

The Back To Wellness Center Chiropractic & Physical Therapy is located at 27454 Cashford Cir., in the Summergate Professional Center, behind Sam’s Club off S.R. 56. The office is open Monday-Wednesday, 9 a.m. – 6 p.m.; 3 p.m.-7 p.m. on Thursday; and 9 a.m.- 3 p.m. on Friday. For more information, visit WesleyChapelChiropractor.com, or call 973-4747 to make an appointment.

‘The Good Cemeterian’ Restores The Final Resting Places Of U.S. Military Vets

It was as a budding photographer, and through a camera lens, that Andrew Lumish first noticed the mold and dirt covering the headstones he was taking pictures of in Oaklawn, Tampa’s oldest cemetery. He was particularly struck by the grime that obscured the memorials to fallen veterans, to the point where you could no longer make out their names. Lumish says he was moved by the thought that they had not only been forgotten, but that their marble and granite shrines had fallen into such disrepair.

So, with a handful of brushes, some water and D/2 Biological Solution — the only product approved for use in our national cemeteries — Lumish did something about it.

He started cleaning them, taking every Sunday to do so, and sharing his work on Facebook and Instagram. What began as the act of a good samaritan evolved into Lumish developing a cult-like social media following as “The Good Cemeterian.”

“It bothered me that many of the military markers were neglected for decades, if not for more than a century,’’ Lumish says. “I thought this would be a good way to honor our veterans, many who have just been forgotten.”

The 46-year-old Land O’Lakes resident, who owns his own cleaning business, Lumish tackled his newfound calling with vigor. He slowly perfected his trade, tombstone by tombstone, with some restorations taking 20 minutes, while others have taken months.

“It’s kind of an art form,’’ Lumish says. “It all depends on the complexity of the monument. Some have lots of nooks and crannies, and they require tooth brushes, Q-tips, whatever it takes.”

WFTS-TV, Ch. 28, the local ABC affiliate, did a small segment on Lumish in 2015 — he jokes that it was between a “Dirty Dining” segment and the weather — and it went viral, with more than 30 million online views.

Lumish shared his story with a raptured gathering at the New Tampa Rotary Club’s breakfast on Jan. 6. Club member Craig Miller had seen Lumish featured on “CBS Sunday Morning” last November — Miller says he and his wife Dee always tape the show and watch it after church — and reached out to him to be a featured speaker for the club..

“He had some really interesting stories,’’ Miller says. “He was great.”

Lumish, who says he has cleaned roughly 800 headstones and monuments of military veterans from the Civil, Spanish American, Korean, Vietnam and two World Wars, doesn’t just do restorations — he includes stories about the people buried beneath them to complement his before-and-after photos.

Rotarian Craig Miller (left) reached out to ‘The Good Cemeterian,’ Andrew Lumish, to speak at a New Tampa Rotary Club breakfast.

His most recent restorations were for World War I veteran Milton Payne Turner, who died in 1963 in a nursing home, and his son, Milton Owen Turner, who preceded his father in death when he was killed in WWII by the Nazis, just 23 days before Adolf Hitler committed suicide.

Lumish shares details of the men’s lives  on his Facebook page (search: TheGoodCemeterian), and his posts have been shared, liked and commented on tens of thousands of times. He estimates he reaches roughly 400,000 people a week (or more than 20 million a year) through social media.

Lumish started on his path to becoming the Good Cemeterian in the Lutz cemetery, where he returned the luster to a monument honoring a Civil War veteran.

“I never thought about it, I just wanted to give respect back,’’ he says. “Once I became better (at it), I took on bigger projects.”

One such bigger project involved a 10-foot-tall monument to two Tampa brothers, ages 16 and 14, who died in 1891. The story goes, the older brother goaded the other, who couldn’t swim, into removing his flotation device. But, once it was removed, and the older brother realized the mistake, they both drowned while he tried to save his younger brother.

“Some of the stories are sad,’’ says Lumish, who has been lauded by the Department of Veteran Affairs and other organizations for his efforts.

Lumish has an assistant, Jen Armbruster, who helps research the stories, and uses a number of online geneaology accounts to dig into fallen soldiers’ backgrounds in great detail. He often includes photos of his subjects when they are available, and even researches unmarked graves he has restored, to unlock the past.

“We try to tell their entire life stories,’’ says Lumish, who says he spent most of his adult life in corporate America before discovering a knack for photography. “I’ve always loved history, and this has allowed me to tell stories. It can be like finding a treasure.”

People from across the globe have shown their appreciation. Lumish says he gets thousands of messages from relatives and friends of those he features, and he says schools have contacted him about having their students do something similar for projects in their classes.

Lumish may be cleaning the surfaces of monuments, but he is only scratching the surface of what he hopes to accomplish. He has a number of projects in the pipeline as he continues to tackle lost history, one grimy tombstone at a time.

“I love doing it, I love telling stories,’’ he says. “In a world bombarded with negativity, this is something positive. It’s just a personal thing for me, but it has struck a nerve across the globe. There is no better feeling.”

You can follow The Good Cemeterian at Facebook.com/TheGoodCemeterian and on Instagram at instagram.com/thegoodcemeterian.