Coach Damon Zassenbraker gets a victory dousing after the Longhorns’ third straight Pasco County championship. (Photos courtesy of Valerie Sercu/Celebrate Everything Photography)
John Long Middle School football coach Damon Zassenbraker has an unusual approach to kicking the ball off during games.
He doesn’t.
Instead, he orders onsides kicks, where the ball needs to only travel 10 yards before the Longhorns can recover it, unless the receiving team beats them to the ball, which they usually don’t.
After 23 straight wins, including a third consecutive Pasco County middle school championship on Oct. 28, it’s hard to argue with his strategy.
The Longhorns defeated local rival Weightman 35-6 to cement themselves as an official dynasty in Pasco’s middle school ranks. Behind two touchdowns apiece from quarterback Isiah Williams and running back Gavin Zassenbraker and, of course, some key recoveries of onsides kicks, the Longhorns capped off another undefeated season.
“It feels good, I’m happy for the kids,” said Zassenbraker, a world history teacher at Long and the head football coach for two different stints totalling six years. “We give them a game plan, and they go out and execute it. It’s wonderful to get to this point again.”
The Longhorns were able to attack the outside edges with success against Weightman. Williams, who improved throughout the year, scored the first touchdown around the right end, as Gavin Zassenbraker sealed the edge with a block to clear the way for the 40-yard score, and then Zassenbraker followed that up with his first touchdown, covering 24 yards on an inside run.
Weightman struggled with the Longhorns’ offense all evening. Coach Zassenbraker described his offense formations as a combination of the stuff the University of Oregon and Auburn University run, and it produced early results that put Weightman on its heels.
Kicker Cameron Canard was a key offensive weapon in the championship victory.
Long’s kicker Cameron Canard’s amazing ability to make his onsides kicks hard to recover was more than enough to provide the cushion the rest of the way. Williams and Jayden Ramos recovered two onsides kicks, and with Weightman playing up to defend against it later in the game, Canard — who acquired his kicking skill playing soccer — kicked one deeper that his teammates recovered.
Those kicks limited Weightman to only four offensive possessions in the game.
“Cameron has an amazing ability to make the ball bounce just right, it’s unreal,” Zassenbraker said. “I think we had to recover at least two every game.”
Doesn’t that peeve the other coaches?
“Oh, absolutely,” Zassenbraker said with a chuckle.
Ironically, Weightman’s only score came when Gacanica Armani grabbed one of the onsides kicks and ran it back the other way for a touchdown.
Canard’s foot saved Long’s season at least once this year.
Trailing Pine View Middle 12-6, the Longhorns scored on a great catch by Jaden Ramos in the left corner of the end zone to tie it up with a little over a minute remaining. Canard’s extra point made it 13-12, and then his onsides kick was recovered to seal the win.
Opponents only scored 24 points against Long this season, and only 12 of those were against the Longhorns’ defense. The other 12 were scored on onsides kick returns for TDs.
Can the Longhorns make it four straight? Zassenbraker isn’t sure. Because of school rezoning, he will lose a large number of his players to the new Cypress Creek Middle School. But, he says he can’t wait to try again.
“It’s always satisfying to see the smile on the kids’ faces,” he said. “I always tell ‘em no matter what, they’ll always be my boys.”
This is the view from the end of Kinnan St., which runs north from Cross Creek Blvd. Mansfield Blvd. in Meadow Pointe is on the other side of the barrier, about 40 feet away. (Photo: John C. Cotey)
Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who has tried to get Kinnan St. in New Tampa connected with Mansfield Blvd. in Meadow Pointe II — the infamous Kinnan-Mansfield connection — for more than a decade, may finally get his wish.
Well, partially, anyway.
While Pasco County is firmly committed to not connecting the two roads to general traffic, it has expressed a willingness to connect them for fire rescue and other emergency vehicles. With no other options remaining, Hagan — who represents New Tampa as part of Hillsborough’s District 2 —thinks it’s time to make a deal.
At a Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) meeting last month, Hagan introduced a motion to direct the county staff to meet with their Pasco counterparts to forge an interlocal agreement authorizing the Kinnan-Mansfield connection, for public safety purposes, to finally become a real thing.
The two sides were expected to meet last week.
Ken Hagan
“I basically introduced the item because I have been trying to make this connection for well over a decade now and, unfortunately, Pasco has steadfastly refused,” Hagan says. “While they have not completely seen the light, this is certainly a step in the right direction.”
If a deal is struck, the roads will be connected, and an entry-and-exit bar will be installed to keep vehicular traffic out. The two counties also will be connected at Kinnan-Mansfield by pathways for pedestrians and bicyclists.
Residents of Meadow Pointe II have fought the connection because they say it would add too much traffic to Mansfield Blvd., which is home to community entrances and area schools.
Proponents of connecting the roads have argued that it would be good for local businesses and residents and would help ease traffic in the area, while also benefiting fire rescue and emergency medical services, as the two counties have a mutual aid agreement.
Currently, roughly 30 feet of overgrown grass and bushes — and a good deal of junk that has been dumped in the area — is all that separates the two roads, which were never connected when Kinnan St. was completed in 2007.
Since then, the counties have bickered on numerous occasions over whether or not the roads should be connected.
In 2015, then-District 7 Tampa City Council member Lisa Montelione re-ignited the debate after K-Bar Ranch resident Otto Schloeter severely burned his arm and did not receive medical attention for 45 minutes, after his call was bounced between the two counties before a crew was finally dispatched. Because the roads weren’t connected, Montelione argued, it took emergency medical services twice as long as it should have to reach Schloeter.
Luis Viera, who replaced Montelione on the City Council, picked up the fight, but also to no avail.
Pasco County commissioned an engineering firm to study potential connections between the K-Bar Ranch area and Pasco County.
In June, Pasco’s Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) voted unanimously to recommend connections to K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. in New Tampa’s K-Bar Ranch community at Meadow Pointe and Wyndfields Blvds., while also recommending the first responders connection at Kinnan-Mansfield.
Pasco County’s commissioners have yet to vote on it.
“Is it what we wanted in full? No,’ says Viera, who has been busy holding meetings hoping to resolve the impasse. “But, does it address our public safety concerns? Yes.”
Viera says he had conversations recently with residents of K-Bar Ranch, which is building 400 more homes but still only has one way, Kinnan St., to exit K-Bar to the west.
“They seem supportive,” Viera says.
Hagan said it is his understanding that Pasco will vote for the public safety connection.
Hagan secured $250,000 from the county in September of 2017 for what he hoped would be a connection open to everyone.
That money is still available to build the public safety connection.
Did you know Florida’s Burmese python problem is spreading north? Former Cory Lakes Isles resident and Wharton High grad Kevin Reich is helping to make sure that doesn’t happen.
Kevin Reich caught and bagged this nearly-18-foot Burmese python back in July.
Kevin Reich was driving through the Grand Cypress National Preserve in Ochopee, FL, one evening back in late July, and was about to give up and head home when the tail of a Burmese python caught his eye.
“Just by the tail, I knew it was going to be a big one,” Kevin says.
So, he did exactly the opposite of what you might expect — but something perfectly normal for him — he parked his car on the side of the road, hopped out and walked up to the snake.
Armed only with his bare hands, Kevin grabbed the tail and dragged the python out, the two dancing a slithery dance, as he deftly avoided attempts by the python, which are non-venomous constricting snakes, to wrap itself around him.
After 15 minutes, the snake was tuckered out. Kevin grabbed it by the neck and victoriously bagged it.
He was right about the size, too: it checked in at a goosebump-inducing 17-feet, 9 inches long, and weighed in at 83 pounds, 12 ounces.
At the time, it was the second-longest ever caught by a member of the Python Action Team.
“I knew it was going to be a challenge and a bit of a battle,” Kevin says. “Big snakes don’t come along much. It was a very big, very strong animal. When it started to lose its steam, I just went in for its head and got a hold of it. I could tell it was still very strong. It was trying to turn its jaw around to bite me. The hardest thing sometimes is getting them in the bag.”
While Kevin’s full-time job is in the U.S. Coast Guard, he finds plenty of time to do his part to help the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) try to tame the ever-growing population of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades and surrounding areas. The FWC created the Python Action Team in 2017, to combat the invasive species, and has captured nearly 1,000 pythons since.
Still, Kevin says that in certain areas, where racoons, rabbits and opossums should be bountiful, there too often is nothing, due to the spread of the Burmese python.
He says he knows what animals do and don’t belong in a certain area. Growing up in Cory Lake Isles, he says he was your typical Florida outdoor boy, exploring his nature-rich community.
“There isn’t one little portion of those lakes or islands that I don’t know,” he says. “I fished on that lake every day. It’s where I learned a lot about the outdoors in Florida.”
Kevin joined the Coast Guard in 2016, after graduating from Wharton in 2012.
He was stationed in Miami, which was a perfect fit, in part because it allowed him to explore the Everglades. It was while doing so with a buddy that he caught his first Burmese python — a freshly hatched 2-footer.
By the way, his second catch was a 15-and-a-half foot python.
He became a certified volunteer Burmese python hunter, before the FWC and Southwest Water Management District began programs that contracted people to help rid the area of pythons.
“It’s awesome,” Kevin says. “You get paid to go out in these places in the Everglades and explore and help remove these snakes.”
Python Action Team members make just $8.46 an hour, plus $50 for each snake measuring 4 feet, and $25 for each additional foot beyond that. So, a 17-foot Burmese python would net the hunter $375.
That’s a nice bonus for something Kevin confesses he would do for free just to help. He says that 95 percent of contractors do not euthanize pythons on site. Instead, they bag them and hand them over to the FWC for research, as the wildlife commission tries to figure out a way to more effectively remove the snakes.
Since he began trapping pythons, Kevin says he has captured well over 100 of them. He has been bitten numerous times, and has been sprayed with the snake’s musk, which he says leaves one the foulest odors he has ever smelled. He says he keeps Lysol disinfectant wipes in his equipment bag to wipe off his arms anytime he gets tagged.
The longest python ever caught in Florida was 18-feet, 8-inches (in 2013), and the longest ones caught by the Python Action Team are 18’-4” (in September) and 18’ (last December).
“Most of the folks that know me are not at all surprised that I do this,” Kevin says. “It’s definitely a challenge and something I enjoy. I know what animals do and don’t belong, and some of these places just don’t have any small mammals or birds left. These snakes are everywhere. I’m doing my part to help and preserve the area.”
Williamsburg resident Francesca Caravella is 93 years old, but that doesn’t stop her from playing tennis 3-4 days a week and whipping up on the young‘ns.
Three times a week, and sometimes more, Francesca Caravella slings her tennis bag over her shoulder and trudges across the grass from her home just a few hundred yards away in search of competition.
She arrives at the court each morning, and effortlessly reaches down like a gymnast stretching for a routine to remove little plastic bags from her shoes, her protection against the morning dew.
Here at Williamsburg, one of Wesley Chapel’s oldest communities where she has lived since 1983, Francesca is tennis royalty. The 93-year-old left-handed racquet-wielding spitfire also is something of a freak of nature.
“You wouldn’t know she’s that old, the way she plays,” says Glenn Dimiccio, who maintains the courts at Williamsburg and also is one of the community’s top players.
Dimiccio is warming her up on this day, and it is brutally hot and humid. And yet, Francesca is moving side-to-side, hitting backhands and forehands undaunted.
She had her left meniscus surgically repaired a few years ago, ending her singles career, and her right knee is bone-on-bone and can get quite sore, but Francesca is remarkably agile for someone her age. She still cracks a steady forehand and will liberally mix in high lobs to keep her opponents off the net.
“You gotta do what you gotta do,” she is fond of saying.
In matches, Francesca lets her partners do the work at the net. She was once smacked so hard in the face by an overhead, “I had to spend thousands of dollars on new dentures.”
Francesca definitely knows the game of tennis. She is picky about her racquets and tennis gear and she watches the game closely on the Tennis Channel.
Her friends at Williamsburg have asked her why she doesn’t get an official USTA ranking. The USTA holds national events in all age groups, including 90+, and her teammates and opponents are almost certain she is one of the best 90-year-olds in the country.
“I don’t want to travel far to play people,” she says. “Being number one is just not that big a deal for me.”
The daughter of immigrants who hailed from Messina, Sicily, Francesca grew up in Brooklyn, NY, where she says exercise was always a way of life.
She played handball in junior high and stickball in the streets. She says she joined a gym at 16 years old, and after meeting her husband Sal at age 18, learned to ballroom dance. After she had children, she would exercise along with Jack LaLanne on television.
It wasn’t until she moved to Florida in 1985 that she picked up a tennis racquet.
“Nobody ever gave me a lesson,” Francesca says. “Not one. I picked up things by watching players on television. I remember watching (Bjorn) Borg, (Andre) Agassi and (Pete) Sampras. I learned the basics by watching them.”
After tennis, Francesca heads back home to shower, and then it’s off to the New Tampa YMCA for some cardio and yoga. When her workout is over, she will spend many afternoons on her ¾-acre lot, tending to her gardens.
Francesca takes her tennis seriously. She keeps a journal and a log of every potential player. She plans matches at least two weeks in advance. And, if you don’t show up to play when scheduled, you will learn something else about Francesca.
“She is feisty,” Dimiccio says.
The two became fast friends, after DiMiccio moved to Williamsburg long after Francesca had already established herself as the Queen of the Courts in the tight-knit community.
Dimiccio had just started playing tennis again after putting away his racquet decades ago, and he says “she was kicking my butt.”
The two are now inseparable mixed doubles partners. Dimiccio is more advanced, with a high 4.0 USTA rating, while Francesca is more of a 3.0. He serves as her unofficial coach and protector, and they make an ideal pair.
“I promised her I’ll play with her every Friday as long as she’s around,” DiMiccio says, then jokingly adding, “but now it looks like she just might bury me.”
Special thanks to Wes Henagan for his help on this story.
In a tiny office tucked behind The Grove shopping center he recently bought for $62.7 million, Mark Gold is unveiling big dreams.
“Big, big, major,” he says. “This is major.”
Gold’s vision is all over the walls of the leasing office at The Grove, on blueprints and promotional materials.
There will be a family park, an amphitheatre for musical performances, a brewery, new restaurants, an indoor adventure facility, beautiful landscaping and lighting, and what Gold says will be the biggest shipping container park — think Sparkman Wharf, but on steroids — in the world.
A rendering of how a “container park” will look at The Grove.
There also is room for 400 homes, if Gold chooses to develop the additional acreage.
While others have, for too many years, seen a big box dead end office plaza with empty buildings and overgrown and unkempt land, Gold sees the future.
“This is a diamond that no one has touched for 10 years,” he says. “No one had the money to polish the diamond. That’s just crazy.”
The Grove, which opened in 2007 and whose current tenants include Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Michael’s and others, as well as the Cobb 16 Movie Theater, may be an afterthought to many locals, a shopping center that once had great potential before development stopped. Gold and his Mishorim Gold Properties promise that will change.
“The message is, The Grove is coming back,” says Gold, emphatically. “It’s not owned by the bank or an insurance company anymore, it’s owned by creative developers that do this already all over the U.S.”
As Gold lays out his plan, it almost sounds too good to be true. However, District 2 Pasco County Commissioner Mike Moore, who arranged a meeting for Gold with county planners and administrators, loves the idea.
“I think he’s the real deal,” Moore says. “When he left after his presentation, there was energy and excitement in the room.”
Pasco’s uber-friendly-to-business county commission is likely to do what it can to make things happen fast. Many of the typical hold-ups — such as proper zoning and utilities — are all already in place.
The mostly vacant Village across the parking lot from stores like Best Buy, Marshall’s and DICK’s Sporting Goods has been mostly vacant but Gold already has new tenants signed to leases.
Gold, who has now owned the plaza less than a month, isn’t wasting any time starting to create a destination that he thinks could serve as a downtown Wesley Chapel one day.
“This is not only about money, it’s about vision,” he says. “Let’s bring something to Wesley Chapel that people like to come to.”
Just a few days after his purchase, he already had signed leases for 15 of the 60 containers, or micro-shops, that will populate the land between The Grove’s office “village” and Outback Steakhouse. Moore said he was impressed to see that overgrown grass had already been moved and some of the area was already being prepped.
Gold is hoping to create a European-flavored market or bazaar, with an emphasis on locally-owned stores and boutiques, and he says that in about two months, the containers will begin showing up.
“Things are moving fast,” he says. “This is big in places like Europe, Amsterdam…you see it all over the place. In the U.S., it is fresh. And, it is going to be the largest one in the world.”
Each of the container “shops,” which are former semi-truck trailers that will be outfitted with solar panels, is 40-feet long (although there are options to split the office containers into two or even three separate spaces), and here’s the big news — he is renting them out for only $1,500 a month for an entire container, with limited up-front costs for design.
“If you have a dream, let’s make it happen!,” Gold says.
“If you have a dream, let’s make it happen!,” he says. “This is your mom-and-pop opportunity, your dream. I care about my tenants. I want to help people come to us. Let me help you.”
A family park for children also will be one of the key components of The Grove’s transformation, as will a 36,000-sq.-ft. indoor trampoline/adventure park (see pg. 14)..
New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees is a part-owner of Surge Adventure Park, Gold says he already has Surge at four of his developments and that it is likely Brees will follow him to Wesley Chapel, too. Surge Adventure Park would be built near the Cobb 16 Movie Theater.
As we reported last issue, Double Branch Artisanal Ales, owned by Wesley Chapel residents, is expected to open in December, the first new project under Gold’s Mishorim Gold Properties.
“I think it is extraordinarily exciting for our community,” says Hope Allen, CEO of the North Tampa Bay Chamber. “It’s a long time coming. “It was disheartening to see (The Grove) not living up to its full potential over the last couple of years. I appreciate that new ownership is going to invest in it.”
Gold says he also has signed leases with at least four restaurants — pizza, sushi, gourmet hot dogs and frozen yogurt — for the currently mostly-vacant office park that he calls “The Village,” as well as a restaurant/duelling piano bar owned by Wesley Chapel resident Jamie Hess and his brother Joe.
“I met with him and was very enthusiastic and energetic,” said Jamie Hess, who signed his lease on Oct. 10. “I thought he had an amazing plan. I went home and researched his other properties and after that, I was sold. He’s going to make The Grove a huge success.” We’ll have a separate story about the piano bar in a future issue.
Gold has a reputation for investing in property that is undervalued and turning high-vacancy shopping and office centers into bustling, vibrant, family-focused entertainment destinations.
He bought the Lynnhaven North shopping center in Virginia Beach, VA, in late 2018 and quickly turned that around, with nearly $10 million worth of renovations and upgrades.
Whether you’re talking about the Regency Court Shopping Center in Jacksonville, or the Shoppes at Hickory Hollow in Antioch, TN, the DW Center in Newport News, VA, or a handful of other similar U.S. projects, Gold has swooped in to buy a failing shopping center and invested millions into transforming them.
And, the ebullient Gold is excited about The Grove’s prospects.
He says he has been looking to purchase land in the Tampa Bay area for years, but couldn’t find anything that suited him.
“It was like Mission Impossible,” he says.
He spent eight months negotiating to buy The Grove, when he says it usually takes him only about a month to complete similar deals.
The purchase included the 604,000 sq. ft. of existing shopping and dining space, as well as 1.3-million sq. ft. of retail and office space that he plans to build.
But, even better, The Grove is located in one of the southeast’s fastest-growing areas.
Not only are there thousands of homes at various stages of development within a 10-mile radius of The Grove in nearby communities like Mirada, Epperson and even Quail Hollow, but Wesley Chapel also boasts an average annual household income of $92,000.
The shopping center is located just off busy I-75, and can be seen by 100,000 drivers a day.
“I am in the middle of the all the action,” Gold says. “Right where I want to be.”
And soon, he hopes, where all of Wesley Chapel will want to be.
For leasing & more information about The Grove, contact keren@mgoldgroup.com.
