Category: Sports

HerStory to be made at AdventHealth Center Ice Saturday!

Digit Murphy, pictured here coaching the Chinese National women’s hockey team.
(Photo courtesy of Digit Murphy via Getty Images).

Margaret “Digit” Murphy was strolling through the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, OH, one day, and asked one of the employees if there were any exhibits about some of the women — either executives, referees or television announcers — that had left their mark on the game.

“Follow me,” the employee said, and proceeded to take Murphy on a fruitless tour. Apologizing, the employee simply said, “Well, it used to be here.”

Murphy thought for the richest sports league in the world, pro football’s $100-million Hall of Fame would at least have something dedicated to women. But, she wasn’t really that surprised it didn’t.

“We can’t tell our story anywhere,” sighed Murphy. But, that sparked an idea.

Along with Wesley Chapel’s Jeff Novotny, Murphy has hatched an idea to bring those kind of stories, in this case, those specifically related to ice hockey, to the people.

First stop: Saturday, March 9, 1 p.m. at AdventHealth Center Ice (AHCI).

That day will mark the grand opening of the “Herstory Museum,” which will feature interactive displays on the second floor of Center Ice, in a viewing room next to the Top Shelf restaurant and sports bar, overlooking two of the skating complex’s ice rinks.

The grand opening will coincide with a large girls hockey tournament at AHCI, providing for a perfect backdrop. Murphy will be on hand to introduce the newest feature at the rink.

And, admission to the museum will be free.

Murphy is one of women’s hockey’s pioneers, as well a key force behind some high-profile cases involving Title IX, the federal law prohibiting anyone, on the basis of sex, from being excluded from participating or denied the benefits of sports, or being discriminated against under any education program or activity that receives Federal financial assistance.

She was having dinner with Novotny one night when she mentioned the idea of creating a “mini” museum, one that wouldn’t require its own building but could make use of technology to offer a wealth of important information and overlooked stories in a smaller space.

Novotny, a project manager for American Consulting Professionals, LLC, immediately thought AHCI would be the perfect place for it, having taken in more than a million visitors in less than two years after opening, hosting dozens of hockey tournaments and serving as the home training facility for the 2018 U.S. Women’s Hockey gold medal winners.

After Novotny presented the idea to AHCI general manager Gordie Zimmermann, a three-year agreement was signed to bring the museum, which will be developed by Murphy’s Play It Forward Sport Foundation, to Wesley Chapel.

“You want to go to places that embrace you,” Murphy says. “Wesley Chapel has bent over backwards for us.”

For Novotny, the museum is a labor of love. He has three daughters, all athletes. His youngest daughter, Madison, spurred his interest in women’s hockey. Madison currently plays prep school hockey at the Northwood School in Lake Placid, NY.

He said bringing Murphy’s story and the Herstory Museum to Center Ice is a real boon for girls hockey.

“She’s a legend,” he says. “It will inspire girls who read her story.”

The room housing Herstory on the second floor of AHCI is only about 100 square feet or so. When visitors walk in, they will immediately see a virtual brick wall where they can purchase a virtual brick, with the money raised going towards running the museum and for a scholarship for a local athlete. There also will be a selfie wall, where visitors can snap self-portraits and post them to social media.

The first display will feature Murphy, a former Ivy League Player of the Year at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. She also produced seven Olympians while becoming (at one time) the all-time winningest women’s hockey coach in NCAA Division I history with 318 wins at Brown (she is currently 13th on that list).

At the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, she became the first American female color analyst for a women’s ice hockey game broadcast on television and, in 2015, along with Aronda Kirby, founded the UWLX, the first professional women’s lacrosse league in the U.S.

Murphy and Kirby also founded the Play It Forward Sport Foundation, which is geared towards gender equity in women’s sports.

Honoring The Legends

Others who will have displays at the museum are:

• Katey Stone, who today is the winningest women’s coach in NCAA hockey history and the coach of the 2014 women’s silver-medal winning Olympic Team;

• Sara DeCosta-Hayes, the goalie on the first U.S. women’s team to win a gold medal at the Olympics (in 1998);

• Amanda Pelkey, the University of Vermont’s all-time leading scorer and a member of the 2018 U.S. team that trained in Wesley Chapel and won the gold medal in South Korea; and

• Kitty Guay, who refereed games in the 2018 Olympics and most recently became the first woman to referee the famous 67-year-old Beanpot ice hockey tournament in February.

“We just want to elevate the conversation and tell stories that don’t get told enough,” Murphy says. “They just disappear, and they shouldn’t. Now, they will be there for the girls and the kids in the community. That’s the only way to advance the conversation and have women’s sports matter.”

Each of the featured women will have their own large vinyl display, and visitors can access a QR Code, or send a text to a certain number, to get more information and videos about each inductee. All of the information will be available online at GetHerStory.org.

Another wall in the Herstory Museum will one day feature a local hero, which could be anyone, says Novotny, but will likely be someone with a relationship with hockey. That person hasn’t been selected yet, but Novotny says that, at the grand opening, they will be putting out a call for nominations and hope to choose someone over the next few months.

Novotny says the recent success of the U.S. women’s team, and Zimmermann’s commitment to helping advance girls hockey in Florida, makes AHCI the perfect place for Herstory. He and Murphy would like to see the concept of recognizing women in sports scaled for other organizations as well, like the new Wiregrass Indoor Sports Complex — which could do similar mini-museums for volleyball players and gymnasts, as well as for high schools and universities and even corporations.

“The whole reason we’re doing this is for little girls to have leaders and role models,” Murphy says. “We want them to see there have been women just like them. If you can see it, you can be it.”

For more information, visit GetHerStory.org and PlayItForwardSport.org.

Wharton’s Versatile Hudson Uses Tools To Succeed On And Off The Field

*Wharton baseball player Mike Hudson with one of the children who insisted he play sports with her while he was in Thailand this past summer.* ***(Photos courtesy of Mike Hudson)***

When talking about an up-and-coming baseball prospect, the chatter always comes down to the “tools” a player has in his repertoire: Is he fast? Can he hit? How’s his glove?

Wharton High senior first baseman and designated hitter Michael Hudson has a number of the tools college coaches look for, so much so that he has been offered a chance to play baseball at the college level next year at nearby Saint Leo University near Dade City.

However, it was a whole different set of tools Hudson relied on for two weeks last October, as he and his father, Scott, joined other members of Cypress Point Community Church on a mission trip to Thailand. There, the Hudsons and other volunteers spent a week working at a local orphanage in Chiang Mai, addressing the serious building and rehabbing needs of the girl’s dormitory.

Hudson said he split his days hanging new lockers, replacing doors and windows, and sanding and repainting interior and exterior walls. But, because he was one of the few workers under 25 years of age, he often found himself being pulled away from the work by the young children of the orphanage to play sports — often finding himself challenged to foot races.

“The smiles on the kids’ faces when they saw me, because I was with a bunch of adults, was really special,” Hudson says. “They knew I could run, so they made me run a lot. They were 12-hour days and I’d spend about six hours building, sanding or painting. The other six hours I’d spend playing with them.”

Hudson said the trip was a great experience, both because it gave him a sense of accomplishment in providing care to the facilities at an orphanage, as well as getting to spend some quality time working beside his father, Scott, who owns and operates ServiceMaster of Tampa Bay, a contracting business that specializes in emergency rehabs of flood, fire and mold damage.

“The thing that stood out for me was how me and my Dad connected throughout the trip,” Michael says. “He is busy at work and I have school and baseball, but this was two weeks we were able to spend together, building our relationship up.”

Although the work in Thailand was the first official building project the younger Hudson has undertaken, it’s far from his first time showing off his handy side.

At Wharton, Hudson has never shied from helping with field upkeep, being labeled as the go-to guy by baseball head coach Scott Hoffman for projects like putting up the windscreen around the baseball field fences, or replacing the tires and the netting on the batting practice roll-cage.

“He’s our resident construction guy here at school,” Hoffman says. “He’s a big help to this team, a great student and a tremendous leader for our program.”

For Hudson, the sense of challenge and the resulting feeling of accomplishment is what he enjoys most about any creative project.

“When you start a project, sometimes you start to think, ‘Oh wow, I’m never going to get this done,’” he says. “But you keep working super hard at it and you finish it up. I always get that tingling feeling that makes me appreciate what I was able to do.”

On the field, Hudson was a key contributor last season as a junior, hitting .312 for the year with 15 RBI and 12 runs scored, while serving as the Wildcats 1B/DH. He began his career at Wharton aiming to play shortstop; however, a series of injuries changed those plans and led to his transition to first base.

“We thought he was going to be our guy at shortstop for the future when he came in as a freshman, but he ended up blowing out his right knee,” Hoffman says. “He came back from that and hurt it again, then came back and dislocated his shoulder, but he never once complained. He’s been through hell and has the best attitude in the world.”

For Hudson, the injuries were no different than any other task put in front of him to accomplish.

“Injuries happen to all athletes, you just have to put your faith in God,” Hudson says. “You do what you have to do. You fight, you just work harder.”

Playing baseball at the professional level is still Hudson’s dream, and he plans to study business at Saint Leo with the hope of working in athletics. He doesn’t see a career in construction or contracting in his future, but he says he hopes the desire to build and create will always be a part of his life.

“Baseball is going to be that number one goal for me after college,” Hudson says. “But at Saint Leo, I plan on majoring in sports-related business and would look to work for some (professional) organization, so I don’t really see construction as a career path for me at this time,” Hudson said. “But I’ll never be paying anyone to do anything once I get my own house, I’ll always be doing that kind of stuff myself.”

mike hudson

New Tampa prep baseball & softball previews

*Brian Baughman is the top returning player in New Tampa, after batting .398 and going 6-3 on the mound in 2018.* ***(Photo: Jarrett Guthrie)***

WHARTON BASEBALL

Coach: Scott Hoffman

Last season: 17-9 (5-2 in Class 8A-4)

Key returners: Brian Baughman (Sr., LHP, OF), Zach Ehrhard (So., 2B), Mike Hudson (Sr., 1B), Dylan McDonald (So., INF), Grady Maguire (Jr., SS).

Promising newcomers: Ryan Fry (Fr, RHP) and Michael Rivera (So., LHP).

Breakout Star: Dubbed by Hoffman as the team’s “Ben Zobrist” for his incredible versatility on defense, junior shortstop and infielder Grady Maguire opened last season on a tear with hits in 10 of the first 11 games. He finished his sophomore season hitting .357, with 20 runs scored and 12 RBI.

Outlook: District runners-up last season and riding a streak of four straight regional playoff appearances, Wharton will again bring a highly-talented team to the table this season.

The Wildcats will be led by senior pitcher and outfielder Brian Baughman, who burst onto the scene last year by hitting .398, more than 100 points better than his 2017 batting average, scored 26 runs and went 6-3 on the mound with a 1.94 ERA and 60 strikeouts.

Sophomore Zach Ehrhard had an impressive varsity debut last year, hitting .371 and scoring 20 runs, while Mike Hudson (see story on previous page) had 15 RBI and Dylan McDonald drove in 14 runs, including one in each of the team’s last four games.

Freshman pitcher Ryan Fry hasn’t even thrown a high school pitch yet, but he already has made an early oral commitment to the University of Miami this winter and may make an immediate impact on the mound for the‘Cats. Lefthanded sophomore Michael Rivera transferred in from Alonso High, where he did not see any varsity action.

Hoffman says: “Our seniors like Brian (Baughman) and Mikey Hudson are guys we lean on a lot and they show how about we go about our business around here… the younger guys see and follow them.”

*Tieley Vaughn, pictured here with USF coach Ken Eriksen, has already orally committed to play for the Bulls in college. (Photo: Twitter)*

WHARTON SOFTBALL

Coach: Brittany Bonea

Last season: 15-7, Class 8A, District 4 runner-up

Key returners: Jordyn Gendron (Sr., 3B); Jillian Long (Jr., P/OF); Hana Schwindler (Sr., P/2B); Tieley Vaughn (So., SS).

Promising newcomers: Riley Collins (Fr., P/2B/OF)

Breakout Star: A University of South Florida oral commitment as a freshman, Tieley Vaughn is a powerhouse hitter according to Bonea, who also boasts a cannon of an arm from shortstop. Last season, Vaughn was the leading hitter for the Wildcats amongst the regulars, hitting .352, with six doubles, 12 RBI and 15 runs scored.

Outlook: The Wildcats, 2-0 so far with a pair of shutout wins, cruised through district play last season, going 6-0 in the regular season, before winning its district tournament semifinal game against Wiregrass Ranch.

In two regular season games against Freedom, the Wildcats outlasted the Patriots.

However, in the district championship Wharton hitters were held to just four hits in a mercy-rule loss to Freedom, and then knocked out of the state playoffs 14-0 by East Ridge.

Despite the end-of-season stumble last year, Bonea, a former Saint Leo University player, has steered the Wildcats to three straight District championship games, and four straight winning seasons since taking over the program in 2015.

Wharton loses four of its top five hitters due to graduation, but will regroup offensively behind solid crop of returners.

Senior Jordyn Gendron (.306, 19 RBI and 10 runs scored in 2018), Hana Schwindler (.292, 12 runs scored) and Vaughn will key the offense.

Junior Jillian Long returns to the mound for her junior campaign after posting a 13-4 record last season, with a 3.33 ERA and 44 strikeouts. She leads the team with three RBI in two games this season.

Bonea says: “Our goal this year is to make sure that the players take their mental game as serious as their physical game.”

*Tripp Merrell, Freedom’s fourth baseball coach in as many years, hopes to finally turn Patriots baseball into a winning program. (Photo: Freedom Revolution).*

FREEDOM BASEBALL

Coach: Tripp Merrell

Last season: 6-16 (1-5 in Class 8A-4)

Key returners: Mitchell Leroy (Sr., RHP), Jeremy Carrick (Sr., SS), Kevin Kirby (Jr., 1B/RHP), Brylan West (Jr., 3B/RHP).

Promising newcomers: Sebastian Burgess, Sr., Util/P; Jack Richardson Sr., OF

Breakout Star: The Patriots success this season will be highly dependent on pitching ace Mitchell Leroy, and according to Merrell the senior righty is just fine with that pressure. Mitchell is a workhorse on mound, who Merrell says is a “big-game pitcher,” who loves the limelight and wants to have the ball in his hands for the biggest game.

However, the Hillborough Community College oral commitment posted a 2.88 ERA, with 59 strikeouts in 56 innings. He is 6-foot-3, and boasts a fastball that gets up to 90 mph.

Jeremy Carrick, a four-year starter committed to NCAA Division III’s Norwich University in Vermont, will play a pivotal role on defense and will look to be a leader at the plate after scoring a team-best 16 runs last season, while juniors Kevin Kirby and Brylan West (the top returning hitter with a .267 average) will contribute at the plate and on the mound this season.

Returning for their final prep seasons after two years away from the program are seniors Sebastian Burgess and Jack Richardson, who Merrell hopes can be impact players this season for the Patriots.

Merrell says: “We have a tough schedule and I’m happy about the teams we played in the fall. And in most of those games, we hung in there and I feel like those things prepared us for this tough district. Come (district tournament) time you only have to win one game to advance, but I know every team in our district.”

*Kylie Coffin already has two homers and nine RBI in two games. (Photo: Dan Sidwell, Freedom Revolution)*

FREEDOM SOFTBALL

Coach: Autumn Hernandez

Last season: 19-6 (Class 8A-District 4 Champions, region semifinalist)

Key returners: Ellis Erickson (Jr., C); Lilly Kiester (So., OF); Abigail Vandeberg (Sr., SS).

Promising newcomer: Kylie Coffin (Jr., P; see photo)

Breakout Star: A speedy runner with a great ability to read the ball off the bat, sophomore Lilly Kiester is already one of the best outfielders in the county according to Hernandez. As a freshman, Kiester scored 26 times last season and hit .333.

Outlook: Freedom is already 2-0 and have outscored opponents 34-6 in its first two wins, a year after claiming its first softball district title last season. The Patriots hope to build on that with a junior-heavy lineup, but one that returns a lot of starting experience. For Hernandez, leaders like Ellis Erickson (.442, 19 RBI, 21 runs, and six doubles in 2018) and senior Abigail Vandeberg (.361, 20 runs, 17 RBI) will be crucial to the success for the Patriots, who are still adjusting to some defensive realignment heading into the start of the season.

Erickson, who already has a homer and four RBI and has already orally committed to play in college for Northern Illinois, is the “heartbeat of the team” according to Hernandez and is the field general from behind the plate.

The Patriots biggest boost on defense, however, might come from its most crucial new edition – Carrollwood Day School junior transfer Kylie Coffin. Last season while pitching CDS to the Class 3A regional final, she posted a 17-9 record with a 1.90 ERA and 156 strikeouts. Relying on a nasty screwball and a solid curve, she will immediately take over the heavy lifting on the mound for Freedom, and she is no slouch at the plate after hitting .487 with three home runs and 32 RBI for CDS.

In two games, Coffin is making a serious impact, going 5-for-7 at the plate with two homers and nine RBI, and has struck out 13 batters in seven innings pitched.

Senior Abigail Vandeberg makes the move from first base to shortstop this season, filling a key role defensively for the Patriots, and returns solid numbers at the plate after hitting .361 with 17 RBI last season.

Hernandez says: “We are a small team this season with just 11 players, so we are moving a lot of players around the field this season. To fill some holes, I’ve had to move some people to new spots, so there may be a bit of a learning situation taking place early on. But I think we are getting better every day, and once we get into district play I expect us to be ready.”

Outlook: Merrell is the fourth new baseball coach in as many years at Freedom, and he is tasked with turning around a program that has had only one winning season, back in 2012. A Sickles High grad and former college player at Webber International University in Babson Park, FL, Merrell will likely lean on Leroy, who was 2-4 last season.However, the Hillborough Community College oral commitment posted a 2.88 ERA, with 59 strikeouts in 56 innings. He is 6-foot-3, and boasts a fastball that gets up to 90 mph.Jeremy Carrick, a four-year starter committed to NCAA Division III’s Norwich University in Vermont, will play a pivotal role on defense and will look to be a leader at the plate after scoring a team-best 16 runs last season, while juniors Kevin Kirby and Brylan West (the top returning hitter with a .267 average) will contribute at the plate and on the mound this season.

softball

HE JUST WINS

Tennis players Kanishkh Ramesh and Destiny Okungbowa (left) and soccer players Jake Bierhorst and Malcom Lewis (right) flank their coach, Dave Wilson (center).

Tampa Bay is littered with high school coaches who have built sports dynasties, at places like Plant and Armwood for football, Tampa Jesuit for baseball and St. Petersburg Lakewood for basketball.

Rare, however, is the coach who not only builds one dynasty, but simultaneously builds two.

In fact, the only boys soccer and tennis coach Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) has ever known, Dave Wilson, may be in a class by himself, especially in Pasco County.

Wilson, who also is the school’s athletic director, has guided the boys soccer team to the state playoffs this season and the Bulls haven’t dropped a regular season game to a Pasco County opponent since January of 2013, a streak of 50 games. That run includes five trips to the Regional playoffs, including a State semifinal appearance in 2015.

Last month, Wilson’s Bulls beat Steinbrenner 2-0 for the 200th win of his career.

Meanwhile, the tennis team, which opened its season Feb. 12 against Cypress Creek, has been even better. The Bulls are currently on a 125-match regular-season winning streak, including 96 straight wins against Pasco County competition since a loss to Land O’Lakes in 2010. That run includes State championships in 2014 and 2015, as well as a runner-up finish in 2017.

Kanishkh Ramesh (and his brother) have been a part of the Bulls long winning streak.

When it comes to playing its local competition, the taste of defeat is an unfamiliar one for Wilson.

“I think about it, but I don’t think our guys think about it all that much,” Wilson says with a chuckle, adding, “except for the fact that I don’t think they want to be the team that has that first loss to a Pasco opponent.”

An Athletic Background

Wilson is a Falls State, NY, native, who grew up as a multi-sport athlete and attended the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Cortland (aka Cortland State) in Cortland, NY, where he was a regional All-American soccer player, played basketball and competed for the track team in the triple jump.

Competition has always been a part of Coach Wilson’s life. But coaching? He says that is, and always has been, where his true passion has burned.

“I never wanted to do anything other than coaching,” Wilson says. “My brothers both took great jobs and make lots of money, but that was never a draw for me.”

He adds, with a chuckle: “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be rich and everything. But, I enjoy every day of my life, coming to practice and going to the games. When you’ve been an athlete all your life, and you still get to wake up in the morning and say, ‘Alright, it’s game day,’ there is nothing better than that.”

Wilson, 54, got his first coaching experience as a senior in college, when he joined the Tompkins Cortland Community College (in Tompkins, NY) basketball staff as an assistant, he moved from there to SUNY Binghamton (in Binghamton, NY) where he was the head women’s basketball and soccer coach for 10 years, before moving to Florida to serve as the head women’s basketball coach at Saint Leo University outside of Dade City beginning in 1999.

However, after a few years at Saint Leo, with a wife and young children, the travel for games, long hours and recruiting trips started to wear on Wilson.

He knew he wanted to make a change, so he stepped down from coaching at Saint Leo in 2002 and spent four years as an elementary school physical education teacher. The itch to coach competitively, though, never went away, and when WRH opened in 2006, he jumped at the chance to get back into coaching.

For someone who sees coaching as a calling, there can be no bigger challenge than launching a program, building a tradition and finding success. Wilson got that chance when he took the job as both the boys soccer and boys tennis coach at the new school.

And success? That has not been a problem for Wilson and his team at WRH. He says that winning never gets old.

In the Bulls’ dramatic 3-2 District 5A-7 semifinal win Jan. 30 against second-seeded Plant, Wilson got caught up in the celebration after Justin Amis scored the winning goal with roughly 30 seconds remaining.

“I think I hurt my ribs,” he said, laughing. “I’m getting old.”

The next night, the Bulls gave Wilson his first district title since 2015 with a 1-0 overtime win over No. 1-seed Steinbrenner. The Bulls eventually bowed out of the state playoffs this season in the second round.

Off The Field Success, Too

Success for Wilson isn’t just what happens on the field — it comes in the legacy of a program, its growth, its traditions. The biggest point of pride, according to Wilson, is seeing those early players return to give back to their former programs, while his current players buy into the athletic culture they are helping to shape.

“The continuity of our program and the consistency started with the first group, that group being around for four years, set the bar,” Wilson says. “They started coming back after they graduated for summer stuff and supported the guys they left behind.”

“That’s so important having those players come back and let the younger guys know what this time here meant to them. Letting them know that the memories they had of high school (athletics) was the most fun they had and that’s trickled down. Every group after them has tried to raise the bar another level.”

(l.-r.) Devi Ndrita, Jori Ndrita, Malcom Lewis, Maurice Lewis, Camilo Torres and JP Torres pose with the District Championship trophy the Bulls won on Jan. 31. It was the school’s first district title since 2015, a team Devi, Maurice and JP all played on. ***(Photo courtesy of The Wiregrass Ranch Stampede school newspaper.)***

Chris Madden, a member of Wilson’s first soccer team at WRH in 2006 and the current Competition & Development Director for the United Soccer League, remembers the first year of soccer at the school, playing without a senior class, and the struggles that squad had to overcome. Even then, Madden noted, the players knew Wilson was preparing them for successes ahead.

“We had a rough go that first year, but Coach Wilson, in all the years I played for him, always instilled a desire to be our best,” Madden says. “I think that is rare these days. I think he really understood the desires of young players and how to make them want to play and become better players.”

Four years later, the Bulls soccer team won 18 games, finished as the District runner-up and made the program’s first state series appearance.

For Madden, it was Wilson’s dedication to the kind of people his players would become, that shines over their successes on the field or courts. That, he says, is what has brought him back to his alma mater for the last 10 years to help out as an assistant coach for the Bulls.

“Getting to coach with him for about the last 10 years has been really important to me, because if I were to give credit to someone for helping me in my career in soccer today, I’d credit Coach Wilson, for sure,” Madden says. “You can tell he cares about you off the field, and when you are looking for someone to be that mentor, that’s very important. He made us want to play for him.”

Wilson’s third “coaching” job at Wiregrass Ranch comes as the school’s athletic director, and he approaches that position the same way he does his role as leader to his student-athletes.

“My belief, and what I preach to all of our other coaches here at Wiregrass Ranch, is that the experience has to outweigh the outcome,” Wilson says. “You can win a state title, but if you are being screamed at and made miserable the whole time, then it’s really not worth doing. We really focus on things so when these kids look back on their high school athletics in 10 years, this really was the best time of their lives.”

Wesley Chapel District Park Rec Center Survives Delay Request

A mock-up of a proposed indoor athletic facility for Wesley Chapel District Park from 2004.

Plans to build a $3-million indoor athletic facility at the Wesley Chapel District Park (WCDP) are moving forward, following some heated debate at the Jan. 22 Pasco Board of County Commissioners (BOC) meeting about whether or not the commissioners should delay it.

At the BOC meeting, where commissioners were expected to approve the choice of the construction company tabbed by county staff to build the facility, District 4 commissioner Mike Wells seemed put off by the lack of notes by evaluation committee members in the committee’s final recommendation of Wannemacher Jensen Architects.

Comm. Wells said he wanted to see the notes the staffers took to make their final decision, which was unanimous. And, because those notes weren’t available, he suggested, “that all of the proposals be rejected and that the project be re-solicited.”

Requiring that every company that submitted bids and presentations do so again would delay the project by as much as six months.

The Consent Agenda is usually a list of items that the county staff has recommended for BOC approval. Sometimes, but rarely, items are pulled from the Agenda to correct a mistake, or to be debated. Wells pulled the Wesley Chapel facility item from the Consent Agenda, something he said he has done only one other time in his career as a commissioner.

“It’d be nice to be able to go back and look at the notes,” Wells said.

County purchasing director Stacy Ziegler told the BOC that proper procedure was followed during the selection process, and that tapes of those meetings are public.

“We followed a process that we have been following for the last six months, since we updated our purchasing manual,” Ziegler said. “We feel we’ve done our due diligence and our recommendation should stand.”

Wells, as well as District 5 Commissioner Jack Mariano — who originally seconded Wells’ motion to reject the selection — seemed miffed that Spring Engineering, Inc., wasn’t chosen.

Spring Engineering and its CEO, Richard Bekesh, each donated $1,000 to Wells’ reelection campaign in 2017.

Located in Holiday, FL, Spring Engineering was ranked as the seventh choice out of nine by the county’s evaluation committee, which was made up of assistant county administrator Erik Breitenbach, director of facilities management Andrew Baxter, chief project manager of the facilities management department TJ Pyche, director of parks, recreation & natural resources Keith Wiley and Brian Taylor, the manager of parks, recreation and natural resources.

Comm. Mariano said the county should be pushing local companies, and he had a problem with Spring Engineering, a local company, not making the top two, even though he did not attend any of the evaluation meetings. In fact, he and Wells both hinted at including county commissioners on the evaluation committees in the future, and later Mariano even suggested the companies should re-present to the commission.

Mike Moore, the commissioner for District 2, which includes most of Wesley Chapel, was visibly frustrated by Wells’ maneuverings, and argued that redoing the entire process would be a waste of time, and unfair to the companies bidding — as well as to the Wesley Chapel residents awaiting the new facility.

“If you go through the whole process and they write comments down and the results are exactly the same, then what?,” Moore asked.

Moore has been a proponent of building the indoor facility at WCDP, where the Wesley Chapel Athletic Association runs youth leagues in a variety of sports. The WCAA’s basketball leagues are currently held on outdoor courts, a less-than-ideal setting considering Florida’s hot and often rainy climate.

An indoor gymnasium would allow the basketball leagues to be played indoors. It also would create an opportunity for gymnastics and volleyball leagues to be played, as well as adult recreation sports like pickleball.

The 13,000-sq.-ft. recreation center would also have meeting rooms and offer local residents a place to gather for meetings, exercise classes and parties.

Moore said he thinks more than 1,000 local athletes and residents will be impacted by the facility.

“There are a lot of people waiting for this to be done,” Moore told his fellow commissioners. “They need this to happen on the timeline we said it was going to happen.”

The idea for an indoor facility at the WCDP, which is currently just a collection of lacrosse, soccer, baseball and softball fields, with outdoor basketball courts and three tennis courts, has been bandied about since 2005, but the money hasn’t been available to build it.

The county has allocated $2.5-million towards the project, which comes from developer impact fees, Moore said, and could be completed by summer 2020.

Last October, the county officially solicited bids for the project, reaching out to 551 vendors via email, including 34 from Pasco County. Nine responses were received, and Spring Engineering was the lone bidder from the county.

On Nov. 29, the evaluation committee independently scored the proposals, settling on a final four of two firms from St. Petersburg and two from Tampa. On Jan. 3, the remaining firms gave presentations to the committee, and all five members ranked Wannemacher Jensen Architects, Inc., of St. Petersburg, No. 1.

Harvard Jolly, Inc., also based in St. Petersburg, was named No. 2 by four of the five committee members.

Wells seemed perturbed that there was a wide difference in rating points between some of the firms during the process, seeming to suggest that those results somehow made the process flawed. Mariano hinted at some sort of bias. Spring Engineering, for example, was scored an 82 by one committee member, but only 46 by two others.

“This is about picking the most qualified person, and I don’t think we did that,” Wells said.

Following the debate, Wells again motioned for the recommendation to be rejected, but Mariano declined to second it and it passed 4-1.

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