Month: September 2022

School Traffic Remains A Concern In K-Bar Ranch

Like almost every school in Tampa, Pride Elementary has traffic issues during drop-off and pick-up times.

Residents in K-Bar Ranch whose children attend the school may be receiving some relief, as the city and county are conducting a number of projects and studies in the area.

In another of Tampa City Council member Luis Viera’s community meetings on Aug. 22, residents had many of their concerns addressed by a panel of experts that the District 7 representative assembled, including Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan (who represents the New Tampa area for the county in Dist. 2), Dist. 6 Hillsborough School Board member Karen Perez and transportation and mobility experts from the city and county.

The hour-long meeting seemed to provide the answers, or reassurance that answers were being sought, that came from roughly 50 residents in attendance.

• The long-awaited Meadow Pointe Blvd. connector to K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. is now open, officially. It opened Aug. 30, a week after the meeting, but those in attendance were already told it would only be a matter of days.

The new connection now allows area residents a quick 4- or 5-minute drive to S.R. 56, just east of the Shops at Wiregrass. AdventHealth Wesley Chapel Hospital, I-75 and the Winn-Dixie and Super Target on County Line Rd. also are now a much shorter trip.

Other connections which were planned for years are coming, Vik Bhide, the City of Tampa chief traffic management engineer said, but it may take a while for any of them to open. Other topics of discussion included:

• K-Bar residents still pine for a Kinnan St.-Mansfield Blvd. connection, which is now open only to emergency response vehicles and police. Area residents always bring up the topic, and this meeting was no different. They were told by Viera and Hagan to pin their hopes on the recent primary elections. Pasco County commissioner Mike Moore, a strong opponent of the connection, is leaving office, and his anticipated replacement Seth Weightman (the Republican nominee facing only a write-in candidate on Nov. 8) may be more amenable to the idea of opening the connection to all traffic, although that remains an unlikely scenario.

• Street lights may be on the way for Kinnan St., which runs north from Cross Creek Blvd. past Pride and to entrances at both K-Bar Ranch and Live Oak Preserve. At past meetings, residents have complained that the street is dangerous due to speeders, which is heightened by the lack of lighting. According to Josh Bellotti, the Hillsborough County director of engineering and operations, the county is working closely with Tampa Electric (TECO) and coming up with designs. “A rough estimate is that in about six months, I think you’ll see lights,” Bellotti said.

• It was suggested that the school zone be extended around Pride Elementary, and speed limits in the area be made more uniform. That continues to be studied by the City of Tampa.

• A Hillsborough County traffic study is under way in advance of the possibility of a massive upgrade of Cross Creek Park, which would include an indoor recreation center, updated playgrounds and outdoor basketball courts, a new parking lot and other amenities. The rec center and other amenities, which will cost roughly $8-million, would be built next to Pride, an area of high traffic in the morning and afternoons.

“I want to address the community transportation problem on the front end so we don’t exacerbate it,” said Commissioner Hagan. “This is a real opportunity to improve the current situation.”

k-bar ranch

Neena Pacholke: The ‘Brightest Light In The Room’

*Former Freedom High basketball star Neena Pacholke, who was a popular news anchor for WAOW-TV in Wausau, WI, tragically took her own life on Aug. 27.*

There was something about Neena Pacholke that made you feel special and loved.

The smile, the laugh, the joy.

“She had this bright, awesome personality that just made you feel so welcomed,” said Lauren Repp, a longtime friend and former basketball teammate. “She had a special charm.”

Charm may be the best word to describe Neena’s personality, as she had it in abundance, according to those who played basketball with her, or watched her as a television anchor where, judging from the outpouring of love following her death, she could radiate from the screen and make you feel as if you’ve been friends for years.

Neena, who played high school basketball at Freedom High and then at the University of South Florida, took her own life Aug. 27 in her Wausau, WI, home. She was only 27.

Neena’s life was celebrated at Radiant Church Heights in Tampa on Sept. 10. She is survived by her sister Kaitlynn, father Aaron and mother Laurie, who coached her at Freedom.

“Absolutely devastated,” wrote Aaron on Facebook. “She was a great gift.”

Neena’s death was shocking to most who knew her. However, Laurie told WAOW-TV News 9 in Wausau, where her daughter was a popular anchor, that Neena had struggled with mental health issues for years.

“She was getting treatment,” Laurie said. “I’ll put it out there — she had been to the crisis center a couple of times. She had so many people here to talk to. She talked to people, but she didn’t want anybody to know how she was hurting, so she didn’t talk until it got so bad.”

That part is what makes it so painful for friends like Repp, who met Neena when they were 12 years old.

“It’s hard to wrap my head around,” Repp said. “Just hearing that maybe it was because she felt like a burden to others, it breaks my heart. All of us are living with the what-ifs and are absolutely crushed and devastated.”

Neena was the “ideal American girl” in high school, who would get excited over coffee, loved the changing seasons and buying a new sweater or boots. She painted her nails on the Fourth of July and St. Patrick’s Day and loved being with her cat, says Faith Woodard who, along with Repp, were teammates of Neena’s.

*The Pacholke family in happier times: (l.-r.) Laurie, Kaitlynn, Neena and Aaron.* ***(Photo: Pacholke family Facebook page)***

The three were starters on the 2013 Freedom High team that made the program’s only State final four appearance. Woodard said she has been watching old game films since receiving the news.

The gritty, tenacious Neena was the Patriots’ point guard, and even watching old games today, Woodard said she can feel her energy and glee.

“She was the glue on that team,” Woodard said. “She was everyone’s biggest cheerleader. But, she was more than just your teammate. She was your friend…She was the happiest person I knew, and the best person I knew.”

After graduating from USF in 2017, she joined WAOW-TV as a reporter. At her service at Mt. Olive Lutheran Church in Weston, WI, on Sept. 4, one of her first friends at the station, Josh Holland, shared with an in-person audience of roughly 200 what a joy Neena had been. Together, the two rookie reporters went to high school pep rallies, sported silly socks, challenged high school athletes to Nerf football games and played life-size games of Hungry Hungry Hippos against students. “She went to great lengths to bring joy to others,” Holland said.

She was promoted to anchor in 2019 and her popularity grew. Following her death, the station’s phone lines and Facebook page were flooded with condolence calls and sadness from people who only knew her through a screen, her personality breaking through that barrier.

When WAOW-TV had technical difficulties and couldn’t broadcast her memorial service live, it didn’t stop more than 22,000 people from watching when it was posted a day later.

Brendan Mackey wrote that being Neena’s co-anchor was an honor and called her, “The brightest light in the room.”

Friends like Repp and Woodard will never forget Neena. Not only did Faith transfer to Freedom for her senior season because of Neena, she followed her into broadcasting, and is currently an anchor for KTHV-TV (THV11) in Little Rock, AR.

“I always tried to be more like her,” Woodard said. “I tried to volunteer more because she did. I tried to do the good things she did and I even tried to make my work (as a news anchor) look more like hers. More than anything, I’m going to miss her for the good, supportive person she was.”

Repp said Neena’s loss will be felt by many. She well remembers her friend always wiggling her way out of running at the end of basketball practices, never taking anything too seriously and always being able to break the tension by laughing or giggling about something.

Repp said she was recently at a Milwaukee Brewers game when the ladies sitting behind her found out she played basketball in Tampa with Neena.

“They started freaking out,” Repp says. “They told me they loved her.”

It is a feeling shared by many.

Neena Pacholke

Spotlight On: Bounty Hunters Basketball!

The Bounty Hunters, a local AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) competitive basketball program, is hosting tryouts for its girls travel teams on Sunday, October 23, and invites girls in grades 5-11 in New Tampa and Wesley Chapel to try out for the squad.

Coach Max Guevara (photo, with assistant coach Jess Cumba), who played AAU ball when he was a kid (“Which probably saved my life,” he says, since he grew up in one of the worst neighborhoods in Philadelphia) and in various adult leagues, played an assistant coach role with other organizations and the feedback he received from other parents was always overwhelmingly positive.

“When you hear; ‘You should have your own team’ enough times, you start to consider it,” Guevara says. “It frustrated me seeing my own daughter go from program to program being told what to do but not being shown how to do it. About a year ago, I contacted the AAU to see what it would take to start my own club.”

Guevara sought corporate sponsorship for 6 months, but says he was told by corporate CEOs and general managers that, “‘No one cares about girls’ basketball’ and that they failed to see the return on their investment. So, I funded the Bounty Hunters out of my own pocket. We ran our first camp this past summer and it sold out in less than 2 weeks.”

The Bounty Hunters is a year-round program, but from March to August, Guevara says his Junior Varsity (JV) and Varsity teams will travel in and out of the state, participating in tournaments against the best their age group has to offer. “We also teach these kids to be productive members of the community through volunteering and teaching them respect, communication skills, self-esteem and even money management,” he says.

The Bounty Hunters JV team is for girls in grades 5-8, and the Varsity team is for girls in grades 9-11. A total of 13 players per travel team will be selected, although the program also offers a Developmental Team.

The tryouts to be held on Oct. 23 will be free of charge. “As a nonprofit organization, we must rely of the generosity of the community to survive,” Guevara says. “You can help us keep this going by making a contribution on our website (BountyHunterBasketball.com).” For more details, please email info@bountyhunterbasketball.com.

AAU The Bounty Hunters

Florida’s Sports Coast To Host 2022-24 Florida Senior Games

The Wesley Chapel area already is host to some of the largest youth sports tournaments in the Tampa Bay area and will now expand its reach to a new demographic — seniors.

The Florida Sports Foundation, the state of Florida’s sports promotion and development organization, and Florida’s Sports Coast (Pasco County’s sports tourism arm) will team up to be the primary host of Florida Senior Games for the next three years, starting in December of this year.

“It’s definitely a different demographic than what we tend to go after,” said Adam Thomas, the director of Florida’s Sports Coast. “Out of all of our sports, 95% of them are youth sports. This will be a new audience to tap into.”

The Florida Senior Games is an Olympic-style sports festival, for athletes over the age of 50 (and there is even a 100+ age group). The 31st annual Games in December will consist of 22 sports — half of which will be staged in Wesley Chapel — and will be held December 3-11. The event is a qualifier for the 2023 National Senior Games in Pittsburgh, PA.

The county has hosted various Senior Games events in the past. The Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County hosted bag toss, basketball shooting, 3-on-3 basketball and volleyball in December 2020, while pickleball was played at the Sarah Vande Berg (SVB) Tennis & Wellness Center in Zephyrhills.

This year, however, will mark the county’s first time as the primary host of the entire event.

And, because of the growth of sports venues in Wesley Chapel over the past decade, many of the events will take place here.

The Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus will host archery, basketball shooting and 3-on-3 basketball (Dec. 3), and volleyball (Dec. 10-11), while Saddlebrook Resort will host foot golf Dec. 10.

SVB will host almost every racquet sport, including padel (which will be played for the first time in the Senior Games Dec. 9-11), tennis (Dec. 3-8) and pickleball (Dec. 8-11).

Cypress Creek High and its rubber track will be home for many of the running events. Track & field is scheduled for Dec. 9-11, with a 1,500-meter power walk and 1,500-meter race walk set for Dec. 11.

Events like bowling and shuffleboard (Zephyrhills), golf (Trinity), and even power lifting (Land O’Lakes) will be held across the county.

“We’ve always been involved with the Senior Games in some form or fashion,” Thomas says, “but landing the actual games as the host destination, that will bring in close to 2,000 (hotel) rooms for a week-long event, and it will bring up to 3,000 athletes and their families here for that same time period. So we’re looking at total visitors per day of 4,000.”

Thomas says that, according to Florida’s Sports Coast’s projections, the Senior Games will have an economic impact of $1.2 million per day throughout Pasco County. And, because the event is a national qualifier, Thomas is hoping the Florida games can put Florida’s Sports Coast in line to host the national event at some point down the road.

“This opens the door for us,” Thomas says. “We’ve definitely got our eyes on that.”

For more information about the 2022 Florida Senior Games, visit FloridaSeniorGames.com or follow FloridaSeniorGames on Facebook. For more information about Florida’s Sports Coast, visit FLSportsCoast.com.

Florida Senior Games

‘Dr. Rosh’ Celebrates A Year Of Helping Patients Look & Feel Better

(L.-r.) Lisa Fahey (front desk and insurance specialist), Dr. Roshni-Ranjit Reeves and Susan Gregor (lead ophthalmic technician and first assistant) work together to help you not only see better, but look better as well. ***(Photos: Charmaine George)***

It’s been one year since Dr. Roshni Ranjit-Reeves officially opened her Oculofacial Surgery & Cosmetic Institute on S.R. 54 in Lutz, a mile or so west of the Tampa Premium Outlets.

“Dr. Rosh,” as her patients call her, says her practice is growing, as people discover the benefits of coming to her for cosmetic services to improve the look of their eyes, faces, and skin.

“It’s aesthetics, but it’s also functional,” Dr. Rosh says. “I want to help people see better and feel better, too.”

Some patients receive insurance-based services, typically after being referred to Dr. Rosh by their primary care doctor or dermatologist. For example, some patients need surgery or treatment to restore the function of their eyes, for conditions such as droopy lids, eyelid malposition, thyroid eye disease, tear duct surgery or reconstruction after cancer surgery.

Others receive aesthetic treatments, such as lower lid surgery, laser skin resurfacing, ear lobe repairs, upper lip lifts, photofacials and laser peels.

Dr. Rosh, who recently was named a “Best of the Best” Cosmetic Surgeon in Tampa Bay, Gold Award winner, by the Tampa Bay Times, says that even functional surgeries often result in patients not only being able to see better and feel better, but also have a nice aesthetic look when they are done.

“The functional and cosmetic sides blend together a lot,” says Dr. Rosh, “like, if patients do upper lid surgery through their insurance but then decide they want lower lid and skin resurfacing, too.”

She says her cosmetic patients typically also want to look refreshed — or like a better version of themselves — but not change how they look.

“I feel like the word has gotten out,” she says. “We’re doing surgeries in our office that people are happy with in terms of speedy recovery, less downtime and it’s easier to come in and get picked up when there’s none of the stress involved with going to the hospital.”

She says she continues to get great reviews on the surgeries she does with her “magic wand,” a carbon dioxide laser that she says makes very precise incisions, which helps minimize both bleeding and recovery time.

The procedure she performs most often removes excess fat from under the eyes, and she typically adds laser skin resurfacing to remove fine lines.

“When we’re doing surgery in the office, patients can look at it right when we’re done,” she explains. “We sit them up and show them the mirror and their eyelids are lifted, the bags are gone, and the skin looks great.”

And, she adds, “Most surgical patients can drive in around three days and may be bruised or swollen for 1-2 weeks. And, most of the swelling resolves within a month.”

While surgery volume has picked up, so have patients coming in for non-surgical treatment options, such as photofacials, which require no downtime, and help to get rid of red and brown spots or patches on the skin, including helping patients with rosacea.

She says that at this time of year, people want to have a nice glow for the holidays without any down time. Her established patients often don’t see her over the summer while they’re busy traveling, which she says is fine as long as they are wearing sunscreen, using antioxidants to protect from UV damage and on a good medical-grade skincare routine.

“Then, they come in during the fall and let me laser away any sun damage from the summer,” Dr. Rosh says.

The week of August 15-19, Dr. Rosh will have a special camera in her office to look at blemishes, damage from the sun and ultraviolet light, and redness under the skin at a microscopic level.

“There’s a double mirror, so the patient and I can both see the same thing,” Dr. Rosh says. “It’s a nice way of looking at the skin in an objective way at a microscopic level and then, we can tailor our plans accordingly.”

She says any new or established patients who make an appointment with her the week of August 15-19 will be able to have Dr. Rosh look at their skin through the camera.

About Dr. Rosh

Dr. Rosh came home to the Tampa Bay area with her husband, Dr. Corey Reeves, and their baby daughter after completing a fellowship and practicing at Duke University in Durham, NC. Now, their daughter is a toddler and the couple has a baby boy on the way.

She says she’ll take a few weeks off this fall, so her schedule is very full leading up to her maternity leave, and her intention is to start performing surgeries again in October.

Dr. Rosh earned her Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree from the University of South Florida’s Morsani College of Medicine in Tampa. She also earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in Anthropology and Biomedical Sciences from USF.

She then completed her ophthalmology residency at the USF Eye Institute and an oculofacial and reconstructive fellowship at the Duke Eye Center. She is certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology and The American Society of Ophthalmic Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery.

Great Results

Lupi Butler attended the Grand Opening of Dr. Rosh’s office last year. She had been thinking about having a procedure done on her eyes and even had consultations with specialists, but hadn’t found the right doctor yet.

However, that changed when she met Dr. Rosh. “She made me feel so comfortable,” Lupi says. “I knew right away I wanted her to be my doctor.”

Last September, Lupi had a procedure to lift her upper and lower eyelids.

“I was so happy with Dr. Rosh,” she says. “I got the results I was looking for, but not only that, her people skills also are amazing. She’s just such a kind, caring, fair and honest individual.”

Lupi also appreciates that Dr. Rosh makes herself available to her patients.

“She basically held my hand the whole recovery. Every time I have something that concerns me, like a little bump on my eye, she says, ‘come see me.’ It ends up being nothing, but she takes care of me.”

Lupi says she recommends Dr. Rosh to all of her friends.

“I’ve always worked out and I’m in good shape,” says Lupi, “but age is something that nowadays you have the opportunity to have some help with, so hey, why not?”

Dr. Roshni Ranjit-Reeves’ Oculofacial Surgery & Cosmetic Institute is located in the same building as the Medi-Weightloss Center at 24420 S.R. 54 in Lutz. For appointments and more information, including current specials, see the ad on page 30, call (813) 303-0123 or visit DoctorRosh.com.

Dr. Rosh Oculofacial Surgery & Cosmetic Institute