Month: December 2021

Heritage Elementary Has A New Butterfly Garden, Thanks To Eagle Project

Heritage Elementary School gifted class science teacher Jean Josephson had an idea to plant a beautiful butterfly garden at her school, but needed some helping hands to bring that project to life.

She got more than she bargained for when she reached out through a friend to Scouts BSA (formerly called the Boy Scouts of America) Troop 148, which meets at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church on Cross Creek Blvd., just down the street from the school.

That’s when she connected with Isaac VanMeter, a senior at Wharton High, who is on track to become an Eagle Scout and was thinking about ideas for a project to help him reach his goal.

The butterfly garden project seemed like a perfect fit.

“I had other ideas, but I really like helping with the environment,” says Isaac, who adds that the school beautification aspect appealed to him, as well. “Having a really nice-looking school is good for students, and it’s great for the entire school to have a garden to play in and learn in.”

Jean says Isaac took her idea and ran with it.

“He did a really, really good job,” she says. “It really exceeded my expectations. I thought I would have to do more planning and directing, but he took control of the whole project.”

While the school already had a vegetable garden and a small butterfly garden, it also had a butterfly mural and space for a much bigger garden to be used for instructional purposes, such as studying the life cycle of butterflies.

Teachers bring students out to the garden to release butterflies raised in the classroom, or to watch worms or bees. They use a curriculum from a nonprofit educational organization called “Agriculture in the Classroom” to bring the lessons to life.

Jean explains that some resources for which plants would work in the garden and how to plant it came from the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS), but Isaac did the fundraising to pay for it and did additional research, making the final selections for what would go in the garden and how it would be laid out.

He brought a team of Scouts out for a workday to make it all happen.

“The soil was so bad that they had to build it up with about seven yards of soil,” explains Jean, “Then, they replaced the edging, put the plants in, mulched the garden, gave it a good watering, and they also mulched the whole courtyard. It was really great.”

Isaac’s next steps are to finish his paperwork and the last three of the 21 required merit badges before his 18th birthday in January. Then, he’ll go before a Board of Review to make his case for why he should be awarded the rank of Eagle Scout.

“This is a big accomplishment,” Isaac says, “something I’ve been working toward for six years.”

Isaac completed the project during his first season playing varsity football, while his team went on a playoff run. He decided to try football his senior year, in addition to competing for Wharton in lacrosse and track and field — throwing discus, javelin and shotput — in previous years.

After graduation, he plans to go to college on a Florida Bright Futures Scholarship — likely at the University of Central Florida in Orlando — and major in finance.

“I really think the whole process of (Scouts) BSA has changed me to be more of a leader and have that mindset of how I can help encourage everyone around me,” he says. “The project taught me how everyone can come together to accomplish things.”

He says he’s pleased with the way the garden turned out and is looking forward to seeing how the plants grow and fill in the garden over time.

Jean says the teachers and the entire school community are thrilled with the opportunities they see for learning in the new garden.

“Everybody is so impressed,” she says. “I can’t wait until it all grows up.”

heritage elementary Scouts BSA

A Local Food Drive Takes On Greater Meaning

The holidays had always been a special time for New Tampa’s Ken Adum. A long-time educator and member of St. James United Methodist Church in Tampa Palms, Adum had devoted much of the holiday season for nearly two decades to playing an integral role in his church’s annual holiday food drive, which was held in partnership with Metropolitan Ministries.

The effort was Adum’s passion. He helped rally local schools when it came to organizing food drives, and also served as the St. James tent coordinator the past few years. He was often busy in the weeks before Thanksgiving hooking the trailer containing all of the donated goods to his Ford F-150 truck and delivering them every few days to the Metropolitan Ministries main tent on N. Rome Ave.

“He loved it,” says his daughter Allison Adum Shaer. “He always looked forward to it.”

In April, Ken, a former teacher, three-time Principal of the Year at Gaither and administrator in a 37-year career with Hillsborough County Public Schools, passed away following a battle with cancer at the age of 74.

Metropolitan Ministries, whose founder Morris Hintzman also was one of the founding pastors of St. James, decided to honor Adum by naming the northern Hillsborough County food drive after him: The Ken Adum Memorial Food & Toy Drive for Metropolitan Ministries.

“He played such a big part in it,” says Dineen Paris who, along with her husband Leonard, are the tent coordinators for the drive this year.

First, A Little History…

In 2003, the Parises, along with Ken and his wife Linda and Joann and Bob Lee, met with Metropolitan Ministries, wanting to expand St. James’ mission of giving back to the community. They formed a partnership that has helped feed thousands of families in the two decades since.

This year, a record 27,000 pounds of food was collected for Metropolitan Ministries in November at St. James. Ken’s daughters, Amie Adum MacLauchlan and Allison, raised roughly a quarter of that in a friendly competition between the schools where they teach. Allison is a fifth-grade math teacher at Lutz Prep, while Amie is an audiologist at Chiles Elementary.

Allison’s fifth-grade class collected 1,600 pounds of food, while Amie (with help from fifth grade teacher Shannon Simpkins) enlisted the teachers in every grade at Chiles and raised a whopping 5,190 pounds.

“This year was definitely more meaningful,” Amie says. “Education and Metropolitan Ministries were two of my Dad’s passions, so knowing that he was smiling down on us during the whole fall season was wonderful. I really wanted to get our school involved to see if I could inspire everyone to do it in honor of my dad.”

The daughters definitely picked up where Dad left off. It was Adum who added the component of competition between area schools in 2017, hoping to put a charge into the drive and impact the younger generation.

“He loved a good friendly competition,” Allison says.

Amie was amazed by the response at Chiles. Day by day, little by little, the donations began rolling in. The school had never collected more than 1,000 pounds worth of food to donate, but that number was quickly eclipsed this year, as large blue barrels in the front office at Chiles were filled to overflowing.

That amount quickly surged 2,000 lbs.….then 3,000…and more, until the blue barrels were buried by cans and boxes of food.

“First, it was the blue barrels, then you could see that more of the floor was disappearing,” Amie says. “Then, you couldn’t see the rug anymore.”

By the time the food drive ended, in less than two weeks, the families at Chiles had brought in more than two-and-a-half tons of food.

When Amie brought Linda to the school on Nov. 19 to see what Ken had inspired, Linda grew emotional.

“I wanted her to see how much they had brought in in honor of Dad,” Amie says. “It was awe-inspiring. Then, she helped us pack it all up so we could take it to the donation tent. It took us an hour and 40 minutes to pack it up, bag it and load the cars.”

The family also decided to start a new tradition. While everyone had pitched in over the years working the tent at St. James at various times during the drive, this year, the entire Adum family gathered this year to work the tent together — unloading donations, weighing food, separating it into HOPE boxes (containing a variety of items for one full Thanksgiving feast) — followed by a family lunch.

It was a special moment (see photo on the cover) to remember the man who helped start it all.

“Losing Ken was a great loss, but to see everyone’s enthusiasm this year, it wasn’t a sad thing, it was a joyful thing,” Dineen says. “It was wonderful to watch them, their whole family (working) together. Ken would have liked it very much.”

You can still donate food or toys by visiting St. James United Methodist Church at 16202 Bruce B. Downs Blvd., 10 a.m.-3 p.m. daily through Thursday, December 23.

Lifesong Church Celebrates Five Years In Tampa Palms

It was just a little more than five years ago when Pastor Svend Wilbekin opened the doors at Lifesong Church in Tampa Palms for the first time.

It was so unlikely, he says, that there’s no explanation for it unless God ordained it.

That was November 5, 2016, when Svend was sent from a church in Gainesville called The Rock, where he had served on staff for 20 years as youth pastor, college pastor and young adult pastor. He felt the experience led him to start a new church in New Tampa.

He says most churches these days don’t launch with fewer than 50 people, but his had only nine. And, the really unheard of thing? They started in a building that they already owned.

“God supernaturally blessed us to purchase a building right before we had our first service,” he explains. When Svend tried to find a place to rent, such as a high school, everywhere he looked was already leased. He started looking at what was available to buy and was shocked to find a building for sale that would work for the fledgling church.

That began frantic efforts to get the building ready, in addition to all of the details of putting together the very first service, while Svend’s wife Katy organized a picnic for all the friends and family who were coming to support them on launch day.

“A lot of families in Tampa Palms saw the bounce house and the food,” he says, and learned about the new church in the neighborhood. He says a full-page ad in the Neighborhood News hit mailboxes the day before the first service and, “It was a great way to introduce ourselves to the community.”

Five years later, Lifesong Church is an important part of New Tampa, as it continues to grow and welcome new people into its ministries.

“The vision of our church is to love out loud,” says Pastor Svend. “If you visit, you’ll hear that terminology. Our heart is to love everybody who walks through our doors.”

He says Lifesong members also are “out” loving the community, like through their homeless ministry.

“We noticed that within the homeless community, food is provided, some shelter is provided, and a lot of services, but what wasn’t being provided were relationships,” he explains. “We started going downtown with nothing but ourselves and our time. We’ve been doing that and made great relationships.”

The church offers life groups where people encourage each other, too. There is a group for women and one where men are challenged to be better husbands and fathers. Every year, the church offers a course to help couples strengthen their marriages, overcome obstacles, and live more fulfilling lives with their spouses.

Svend and his wife, Katy, who now live in Meadow Pointe, are parents to three sons, who all grew up in Gainesville.

Their oldest son, Scottie, had a remarkable career playing college basketball at the University of Florida, where he was named SEC Player of the Year in 2014. He was a star player on a team that went undefeated in the SEC and beat perennial powerhouse Kentucky at home to win the SEC championship in a run his dad calls “magical.” Scottie currently plays professional basketball in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Middle son Mitchell played basketball at Wake Forest and currently plays for the Greensboro Swarm, an NBA G League (the NBA’s official minor leage organization) team affiliated with the Charlotte Hornets.

The Wilbekins’ youngest son Andrew will graduate with a Ph.D. degree in Physical Therapy in May from Husson University in Bangor, ME.

“What’s beautiful about that is they’ve all graduated from college and they all love the Lord,” says Svend. “Where they’re at now really blesses us.”

The transition from living in Gainesville, where everyone knew how to pronounce their last name — thanks to their famous son — to the New Tampa area also has been a blessing for Svend and Katy.

“We absolutely love New Tampa,” he says. “It’s the most incredible community. We love so much about it — we love the restaurants, I love the golf courses. It’s very diverse.”

As an interracial couple, the community’s diversity is important to the Wilbekins and a goal for their church is to “build a community of believers that looks like heaven,” Svend says, embracing all ages, nationalities and skin colors.

Sunday Morning Services

Lifesong Church meets Sunday mornings at 10 a.m., and Svend says that’s where the “song” part of the church shines.

“We have anointed musicians and instrumentalists ushering in the presence of God through the use of music,” he explains. “We have a full band with guitars, drums, keyboards and vocalists singing contemporary music.”

He says the Covid-19 pandemic has been one of the most challenging seasons he’s ever experienced as a pastor.

“We shifted to an online service, and we’ve grown in that area, which has helped us expand our reach,” he explains. “But now, we have an online community as well as an attending community. It’s been neat to see.”

Melissa Choe and her husband Jacob have been attending Lifesong Church in person for about a year with their daughter Melody.

They’re one of the families that found Lifesong online and watched from home before deciding to attend in person.

“I really like the community aspect of Lifesong,” says Melissa. “Everyone is very welcoming and there are opportunities to get plugged in and get involved.”

While Melissa and her husband serve on Lifesong’s Worship Team, her daughter loves Lifesong Kids.

“She’s always saying, ‘Can I go to my church?’ and ‘I love my church,’” says Katy. “I love that (children’s director) Julie (Nash) is really mindful of not making it your parents’ church. They focus on teaching the children about the Bible, but in a fun and appropriate way.”

Svend says Julie offers a hands-on and age-appropriate version of church for kids. “It’s enjoyable, and they come away with the knowledge of God’s word in a practical manner,” he says.

Svend graduated the from University of Florida with a degree in political science. He went through a mentoring program at The Rock under the leadership of Pastor George Brantley to be trained and equipped as a pastor.

Of the experience of planting a church, he says, “It was harder than I thought, and more rewarding than I thought it would be. Seeing people become a community has really been a priceless and beautiful moment, and such a confirmation of what God put in my heart six years ago.”

Lifesong Church hosts its weekly service on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m., including a special Christmas Service on Sunday, December 19. The church is located at 6460 Tampa Palms Blvd., near Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club and Tampa Palms Elementary. For more information, visit LifeSongTampa.org.

Lifesong

Lyons Den Sports Performance For Next-Level Training!

When Connor Lyons realized that his dream of playing professional hockey had reached an end, he decided to do the next best thing:

He wanted to help others try to realize their own dreams.

After nearly a decade of helping train athletes young and old for a number of different businesses, Connor recently opened his own training facility, called Lyons Den Sports Performance, on S.R. 56, between Capital Tacos and Lüfka (see story on pgs. 22-23).

Connor’s latest venture will focus on something he wishes had been around when he was a young athlete — a specialized training facility for middle and high school athletes.

“These didn’t even really exist when I was playing in high school,” says Connor, a 2003 Wharton High graduate and the star of the school’s ice hockey club team. “My goal is to give kids the opportunity I didn’t have growing up.”

In today’s world of sports, and with college scholarships at a premium, top-level high school athletes are always looking for that edge — looking to get faster, stronger and better.

Lyons Den offers personal and group training that can help with things not typically taught by youth, middle or high school coaches. In a traditional high school setting, there isn’t time to take most athletes aside and show them how to run faster, jump higher or hit harder; but that’s what Lyons Den is here to provide.

Towards that end, Lyons Den is hosting a Peak Performance group training for high school-aged athletes (Mon., Tues., Thur. & Fri., 4 p.m.-5 p.m.), and a Next Level group training for middle school-aged athletes (Mon., Tues. & Thur., 3 p.m.-4 p.m.).

“I want to give kids the opportunity to get to the next level,” Connor says. “Sometimes they are just lacking the physical side of things. You can have skills, but if you’re not strong enough, resilient enough, powerful enough or fast enough, you won’t get there.”

While undersized when he played high school hockey, Connor turned himself into a physical player good enough to play one season as a third-line center at Division III Nichols College in Dudley, MA.

But, once he realized that hockey wasn’t going to be a career for him, Connor transferred to the University of South Florida and played for the Bulls’ hockey club program while earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Athletic Training from the USF College of Medicine’s Department of Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine.

While he attended USF, graduating in 2011, he worked as a strength trainer with the school’s football team, and has since worked at the former Athletes Compound at Saddlebrook Resort, where he later became the associate director of sports performance, and at the Athletic Edge in Lakewood Ranch and the Applied Sports Performance Institute in South Tampa, where he was director of combine prep.

At each stop, Connor says he was able to work with dozens of Major League Baseball and NFL hopefuls looking to impress at their combines or their pro days. Many, he says, ended up making it to the pros.

In 2017, he returned to his hockey roots as the director of sports performance at AdventHealth Center Ice. At Center Ice, Connor also worked with USA Hockey for two years, and served as the strength and conditioning coach for the women’s national team that won the gold medal in the 2018 Winter Olympics and various other medals during his time there.

In March of 2020, he decided to open his own training business, which Covid-19 delayed until this past August.

“I sat on it for a while,” Connor says. “It was a scary time.”

Now open, Connor says 90 percent of what his gym does will be focused on middle and high school athletes.

Training To Prevent Injuries

Connor says that much of the training at Lyons Den revolves around injury prevention for athletes. He says there has been a positive correlation in soft tissue injuries and the rise of specialized athletic training facilities.

And, he says, he believes that gaining strength and learning things like landing or changing directions correctly helps prevent injuries. In other words, teaching athletes things like proper positioning allows them to give and take force in a way that helps decrease the likelihood of being injured.

Using the proper techniques, he says, when it comes to things like squatting, and properly rotating your hips and teaching the body to decelerate when running (or skating) also helps prevent the kinds of injuries that have become so common.

“Our No. 1 goal with our clientele is injury prevention, and everything else is a byproduct of that,” Connor says. “If I can get you stronger, you’re going to be more resilient on the field. If I can get you faster to help you get in better position, you’re (less likely to) be getting injured on the field and losing time.”

Connor also organizes speed camps and flight “schools,” where athletes can shave seconds from their times and add inches to their vertical jumps.

He also hopes to offer his knowledge to local coaches by hosting clinics showing them how advanced athletic training can be incorporated into practices and offseason workouts.

One of Connor’s students is Nate Hargest, a Tampa hockey prospect.

Nate was recommended to Connor by Tampa Bay Lightning team chiropractic physician Tim Bain, D.C., and has been training with Dr. Bain for six years.

Now 16, Nate gives much of the credit for his success to Connor, who he says helped transform him into a stronger hockey player.

“It’s been incredible in regards to what I’ve been able to do on the ice,” says Nate. “I was definitely not one of the better kids when I started, but over time I’ve become one of them. I’m one of the strongest and fastest players. I don’t weigh that much, I’m not as big, but I’m winning battles and playing as well as the other guys.”

Nate was drafted earlier this year both by the Sioux City Musketeers of the United States Hockey League, and the Mississauga Steelheads of the Ontario Hockey League, two leagues that serve as a minor league system to prepare players for college.

“The results on and off the ice make me want to keep coming back and training harder,” Nate says.

The Lyons Den is located in the Cypress View Square plaza at 27217 S.R. 56. For more information about how to join or register for training, call (813) 361-2966 or visit theldsp.com.

Lyons Den training

Benito Boys Blast Way To 1st County Volleyball Championship

The Benito Middle School boys volleyball team had been 9-0 before. It had been dominant in previous years. It had won its cluster, or league, multiple times.

However, the Cougars had never won a Hillsborough County championship.

This year, however, was different.

This year, they just happened to have a Hand up on the opposition.

Rolling behind the best player the school has ever had, 8th grader Dillon Hand, the Cougars dropped only one set all season and captured the school’s first-ever boys volleyball county championship.

Benito defeated Roland Park 25-9, 25-12 last month to take home the school’s first-ever County title.

“We went into the season thinking we had a really good shot,” says coach Chris Ellis. “They practiced like all-stars, but sometimes got into games and were tight. We were winning by five points against teams we should have been blowing out.”

If there were any doubts about the Cougars rising to the challenge, they answered it in the first game of the playoffs against defending County Champion Tomlin Middle School, which many saw as the real county championship game.

After splitting the first two sets, the match went to a decisive 15-point third set. Tomlin raced to a 6-0 lead, and then the lead was 11-5. Time was running out.

“I called a timeout and just tried to relax everyone,” Ellis said. “I told them that this was going to be the greatest story in 40 minutes, that they would be in their cars on the way home just going crazy that they came back and won the county championship. So, just relax and let’s take this thing over.”

The Cougars responded with nearly flawless play, scoring 10 of the final 12 points for a 15-13 win, and coasted to wins in the semifinals and final the next two days.

“We were getting pounded, and then they started making mistakes and we didn’t,” said assistant coach Karen Burchfield. “We just got on a roll.”

Burchfield also coaches the Benito girls volleyball team (with Ellis assisting), which was 9-1 this season. She won a county title in 2013, with star Kathryn Attar, who also was a standout at Wharton and is currently an All-Ivy League Conference performer at Yale University.

The 6’-2” Hand has drawn comparisons to Attar, for his dominance and leadership in a championship season. Ellis says Hand is arguably the best eighth-grader in the state, able to control the action at the net as well as possessing a major league jump serve.

Hand’s brother Austin was on the first-ever boys volleyball team at Benito in 2017 and helped as an assistant coach on the team this year.

Ellis says the team’s one play this season was setting Hand for the kill, but the rest of the Cougars definitely helped make that possible.

*Owen Brown (far left) delivers a header for a point on what Ellis calls Benito’s Play of the Year*.

Setter Arman Razavi, also an eighth-grader, was the only Cougar with prior experience other than Hand. His ability to get the ball to Hand was the team’s primary source of offense, but he also served out the last four points of the Tomlin match when there was no room for error.

Libero Kamal Abutaha was a rarity — a sixth-grader who started at one of the sport’s toughest positions. He managed, however, to dig enough balls to Razavi to keep the offense humming, even in the county semifinals, when he had to wear his sister’s Vans because he forgot his shoes.

Sully Al-Qadheeb was the emotional leader on the team, who received a tryout — after the team had already been selected — at the recommendation of track/football coach Rodney Sharpe.

“Coach, I know you already announced the team, but this kid can jump out of the gym,” he told Ellis. “You should give him a look.”

Ellis says five minutes into his tryout, and despite zero volleyball experience, Sully was a starter. He made a number of big plays during the season, including a tip in the third set against Tomlin that tied the score at 12 and swung the momentum in Benito’s favor for good.

Eighth-grader and co-captain Nikhil Katiyar put off soccer to commit to the volleyball team, and always seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Owen Brown — also an eighth-grade co-captain — was consistent at the net but will probably be remembered most for heading the ball during the second set of the championship game, which scored a point and fired up the team so much they had to make a TikTok video of the feat.

Another eighth-grader, Boden Houck, earned his way into the rotation because of his serve, and he led the team off with his serve in every match, and Druve Kulkarni also chipped in with some big serves during the playoffs.

“Dillon was very good, obviously,” Ellis said. “He was ridiculous this season. But, this was a great team. Everyone had a role, and they played it perfectly.”

Benito Middle School volleyball