Category: New Tampa

Local chess kids competing at Nationals this weekend in Orlando

More than a dozen of New Tampa’s best chess players will be competing this weekend in Orlando, as the United States Chess Federation holds its annual scholastic championships.

The 2015 National Scholastic K-12 Championships will be hosted by Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort beginning with the opening ceremony on Friday, December 4, 12:30 p.m, and concluding with the awards ceremony on Sunday, December 6, 5 p.m.

Most of the competitors attending are trained by longtime local coaches Mark Ritter and Tania Kranich-Ritter, who will be well represented in Orlando.

A dozen or so players from New Tampa and Wesley Chapel will be among the hundreds at Disney this weekend. They include:

Aarush Prasad (seventh-grader at Williams IB Middle School)
Ojas Kalia (7th, Williams)
Truman Hoang (freshman, Middleton High)
Shrey Gupta (8th, Williams IB)
Kelvin Ng (8th, John Long Middle School)
Parth Upadhyaya (5th, Lawton Chiles Elementary)
Melvin Uppgard (3rd, Chiles)
Lixin Zheng (8th, Louis Benito Middle School)
Teja Katipalli (4th, Harold H. Clark Elementary)
Jonathon Cotey (7th, Williams IB)
Khoi Cotey (5th, Richard F. Pride Elementary)
David Jin (4th, Pride)
Kevin Jin (5th, Pride)

The highest rated player in the group and the player considered to have the best chance at capturing a title is Hoang, one of the top players in the state.

Hoang, 15, is on the brink of earning Master status, boasting a 2176 rating (Masters are 2200). He is the second-highest-ranked among the 633 players from Florida competing. He is ranked in the top 100 in the country in the Under-16 age group.

“He puts in the most time and most effort at the board, it’s as simple as that,’’ said Ritter. “He loves the game and puts a lot of effort into it.”

While Hoang has a legitimate shot at a title, most of the players attend for the fun and the experience. The tournament has 569 teams registered from 39 states, and more than 1,570 players will compete in more than 60 classes, ranging from players rated anywhere from beginner to more than 2000.

“The experience is just tremendous,’’ said Ritter, who will stop by Saturday and go over the first and second round games with some of his students. “For one weekend, a gigantic hotel is taken over by chess players. Unfortunately, there is a prevalent attitude that being smart and good on an intellectual level is not cool. Suddenly, these kids are in an environment where everyone is doing the same thing they love to do.”

“It is inspirational,’’ said Kranich-Ritter, who has coached a handful of teams to nationals championships, including the 2006 Tampa Palms Elementary fifth-grade team. “You see so many children there — and you’re talking about more than 1,000 — and it’s the best in the country coming in to compete. You see that your sport, chess, that you love, is actually embraced by so many states and so many players. It’s inspirational to see so many of them under one roof. It’s the ultimate.”

Ritter and Kranich-Ritter have been running tournaments and clubs in the New Tampa area for 11 years, with club teams from around the area driving in to compete. Kranich-Ritter, who was the 1983 women’s state champion in New York, is the more serious one of the coaching combo, running local tournaments like a fine-tuned machine.

Ritter can sometimes be found comparing the talents of the 1971 New York Knicks or NBA Hall of Famers Bob Cousy and Bob Petit with, say, today’s Los Angeles Lakers and LeBron James with one of the player’s dads.

An internationally-rated chess master, Ritter is one of only five Level 5-rated coaches in the country, the highest level one can reach in chess. He has tutored five individual national champions, and runs open tournaments monthly, most at the Kumon Math & Reading Center of New Tampa. He also coaches after-school clubs at Pride and Chiles elementary schools, as well as an invitation-only Champions Club that has 28 members, including most of the students listed above.

Kranich-Ritter says she is looking forward to watching the players perform following this weekend. Often, she says, the big tournaments are an impetus for a player’s speedy progress.

“I believe that chess is the matrix of everything,’’ Kranich-Ritter says. “It’s abstract, more than mathematics, more than geometry and art and painting, but it is all of the above. The lessons you learn can be retrofitted to their professions one day. It is the blueprint for everything.”

Great American Teach-In another "Pride"-filled event

The Great American Teach-In (GATI) isn’t just a day Pride Elementary school principal Cindy Land uses to squeeze in a few speakers for students to listen to and gawk at, a day for kids to see the uniforms their parents wear to work or to pet a few animals.

For Land, it’s always been about something bigger.

“I think it excites the kids about their future careers,” Land said, “and it’s just a great way to get your community involved.”

That may explain why Pride rolls out the red carpet with a hot breakfast and a catered lunch for its GATI guests, which this year numbered more than 100.

From firemen to artists, television anchors to local politicians — with a good number of furry critters thrown in between — the Great American Teach-In appears to have been another success not only at Pride, but all around New Tampa.

At Chiles Elementary in Tampa Palms, the guests who came speak to students about their careers included photographers, cooks, physical therapists, hair stylists, authors, experts on Chinese culture and USF cross country head coach Dena Reif.

At Liberty Middle School, also in Tampa Palms, the USF Sun Dolls appeared, along with a comic book artist, commercial pilot and others.

At Pride, there seemed to be almost every job imaginable represented, including Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who has participated at Pride for 10 straight years.

“The 5th grade kids do really well with that, because government is what they are learning right now,’’ Land said.

There were also nurses, doctors, hot air balloons and the always popular animal rescues and certified therapy dogs.

Julie Van Acker, who works for Organicgirl, made healthy green smoothies for the kids in her class, while Kristen Gefre from Busch Gardens showed her kids a screech owl named Emmett and a baby american alligator named River.

The three-page handout with all of the guests and their teaching times was like a treasure map for the Pride students, who have been treated to a number of famous guests in recent years, including former Tampa Bay Bucs coach Tony Dungy.

At Pride, it’s getting bigger and bigger every year.

“It’s one of our largest events that we hold here at Pride,’’ Land said. “We contact everyone the prior spring, and any contacts we make throughout the year, we are consistently sending emails to them. We kind of eyeball the date we expect it to be and go from there. We love to have the community involved.”

10 Things you need to know about Wharton-Freedom Rivalry Night

The Wharton girls basketball team celebrates its first victory of the season.

1. The Wharton girls basketball team beat Freedom 70-49. I’m just going to let that one sit here for awhile. While you’re picking up your jaw, we’ll continue on, but we’ll come back to it, I promise.

Diamond was a Wildcats best friend Tuesday night.

2. Star of the night: Wharton 6-foot senior Diamond Wells, who came in with 25 points scored the entire season, lit up the Patriots for 27 and a bunch of rebounds and made 15-of-19 free throws. Oh, and she was a perfect 10-for-10 in the fourth quarter from the line. Wells’ previous high this season was 14 in the Wildcats’ last game, a loss to Venice, and her career-high was 15 in games against Plant her sophomore season and Tampa Bay Tech her freshman season. Asked if she knew her team was the only one from Wharton that was supposed to lose Tuesday night, she said “yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah.” Oh, and by the way, “School is going to be great” today, she added.

3. If a tree falls in the woods behind a field where one school beats its arch-rivals in four athletics events in one night, does that tree make a sound, and does it still count as a rivalry? It was dubbed Rivalry Night at Wharton, but the Wildcats swept Freedom in all four games — boys and girls soccer and boys and girls basketball — Tuesday evening. Maybe the pajamas the Wharton student section wore suggested to Freedom it was nighty-night time. Or maybe, Wharton just has the better teams for the moment. On this night, it certainly looked like that was the case.

4. For a Rivalry Night, the crowds were pretty, well, sparse. Oh, sure, they came out for the boys basketball game, but when that game ended with the Wildcats ekeing out a 47-44 victory, the gym emptied out. The girls game deserved better, as it turned out, but let’s be honest, everyone thought that game would be a Freedom rout. I counted barely 30 at the soccer games. Lopsided affairs can kill a rivalry, and Wharton has definitely had the upper hand in most of the sports in recent years, but you would still expect a little more sizzle in the bleachers.

5. So back to this Wharton girls basketball thing. The Wildcats just whipped Freedom from start to finish. They were much bigger than the Patriots, killed them inside and never let up, outscoring Freedom 23-9 in the fourth quarter to put an exclamation mark on the win, which I think you could argue at least was the biggest of coach Chad Reed’s career since beating Plant to win the district title in 2009.

It was pretty stunning, considering the Wildcats were 0-6 this season and had lost half of those games by at least 25 points and hadn’t beaten Freedom since 2009 and had lost the last five by 30 points or more and, well, we could go on and on. Because we’re not done. We’ll be back to the girls hoopsters in a bit.

6. Wharton boys basketball coach Tommy Tonelli said in the preseason he thought Evan Trice would be one of the best point guards in Tampa Bay. He was pretty darned good Tuesday night. The senior scored a game-high 17 points, including 11 in the first half as the Wildcats built a lead they would carry into the final period.

7. Wharton’s Josiah Crawford, who scored six points, said there was some talk at practice this week about making sure the Wildcats remained the top hoops program in New Tampa. Wharton has won 12 of the last 14 meetings between the teams going back to 2005, and both Freedom victories were by a combined three points (39-38 in 2014 and 74-72 in 2008). “We talked about how we’re big brother and they are little brother,” he said. “But really it’s about who is the big dog. Tonight we were the bigger dog.”

8. Tuesday’s 4-0 victory over Freedom was the Wharton girls soccer team’s fourth straight game without a loss and third straight win. The Wildcats had a number of breakaways against Freedom, which played with its defenders up in a futile effort to catch Wharton offsides, and could have scored more.

However, two goals from sophomore Alisha Deschenes (her fourth and fifth of the season) and goals from Alabama-signee Taylor Hubbard (her team-leading sixth) and sophomore Delaney Rowan, her scored her first of the season, were plenty.

9. The boys soccer team sandwiched a Freedom goal with scores from juniors Clifford Adjei (to make it 1-0) and Donovan Quigley, with Quigley’s providing the winning margin in a 2-1 victory. Adjei leads the Wildcats with six goals, and Quigley is second with three, and don’t look now but Wharton has won two straight after a three-match losing streak.

10. Back to the night’s heroes. Senior Lauren Wall scored 12 of her 16 points in the first half for the girls basketballers, and junior Sabrena Eye scored 10 of her 12 in the first half, but it was the last basket of the game that drew the biggest ovation. With her teammates on the edge of their seats living and dying with each of her shots, freshman Brianna Boney finally made the first basket of her high school career when she grabbed a rebound off her own miss in the paint and put it in off the glass for two. Bravo, Brianna.

Neighborhood News assistant editor John C. Cotey can be reached at john@ntneighborhoodnews.com

Former Freedom High XC coach charged with sex with student

Former Freedom High track and girls cross country coach Dwight Lamont Smith was booked into the Hillsborough County jail Monday night on sexual assault charges after being accused of having sex with a student on trips to Gainesville and Titusville on consecutive weekends.

Smith, 48 and a resident of Wesley Chapel, faces charges of sexual assault by a custodian and sexual battery of a person aged 12-18. His bond was set at $150,000.

According to the Gainesville Police Deportment report, Smith and his cross country team were in Gainesville Sept. 18 for a meet and staying overnight. At dinner, Smith provided a 17-year-old girl, a student at Freedom and member of the track team, with vodka and orange juice and made her drink it, according to the report. He also gave her a key to his hotel room so she could receive “counseling”. When the girl showed up at his room, he gave her more alcohol until she became intoxicated, and then had sex with her around 7 p.m.

Smith left the room to meet some school alumni for dinner, and told the girl to stay in the room. She did not stay, however. Smith texted the girl later that night after dinner, telling her to return to the room. When the girl entered the room, Smith was naked. He then provided more alcohol to the girl, and they had sex again around 11 p.m.

The following weekend, the two again had sex in a hotel room in Titusville, where the team was competing in another meet.

According to a Tampa Police Department report, on Nov. 11, Smith showed up at her house in a red car, unannounced. Her parents were not home, and he told her he missed her and wanted to come in and have sex. But after seeing her two cats sitting in the window of the house, he said he could not go in because he was allergic to cats. Instead, they sat in her car and kissed as he fondled her. She said she did not want to have sex in the car, and told him she was on her period, so he left.

She then realized that their relationship was wrong, the report states, and reported it to the Freedom principal Kevin Stephenson on Nov. 12, who immediately took her to the School Resource Officer.

Smith, who was a teacher’s assistant in the school’s Exceptional Student Education program, was escorted out of school and has been fired.

Help is coming quicker for the SR 56/I-75 interchange…but quick enough?

Folks tired of pulling their hair out during frustrating morning and evening drives through the I-75 and S.R. 56 interchange got some good news recently when the Florida Department of Transportation said they will be speeding up construction to help alleviate the congestion, but that it likely not soon enough to make local drivers happy.

FDOT will be adding construction of a diverging diamond interchange (DDI) to its current five-year work plan. Construction on the interchange should begin in 2020 instead of 2024, as previously announced.

FDOT is banking on the DDI to relieve the traffic flow. There is an entire website devoted to explaining why the DDI is better and safer than other diamond-shaped interchanges (divergingdiamond.com), and it touts benefits like almost half as many conflict points as conventional diamond interchanges, better sight distance at turns and positive response from the public.

Florida is building its first divergent diamond at the I-75 and University Parkway interchange in Sarasota. To see a video of how it works, read the online version of this story at NTneighborhoodNews.com.

Is 2020 soon enough to placate many of the 55,000 drivers daily that pass through interchange from the east, or the 45,000 coming from the west?

District 2 Pasco County Board of County Commissioners member Mike Moore was happy to see FDOT adjust the construction timetable, but says he is still not as happy as he would like to be. With a 2020 start, construction could take another two or three years.

“Obviously, the future is now. The traffic is here now,’’ said Commissioner Moore. “It got moved up, but I’d like to see the design phase wrapping up in 2017 or so, with the construction phase completed by 2019, 2020.”

FDOT, however, is saying the project will begin in 2020. It presented its new plan, which has a price tag of $8-10-million according to Moore, to Pasco commissioners at a Pasco Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) meeting in Dade City Nov. 9.

The S.R. 56/I -75 interchange continues to be a bone of contention for those in the New Tampa and Wesley Chapel area, and the 2.3-mile-long northbound exit routinely experiences back-ups a mile or so long, sometimes even reaching the I-275 apex at the Pasco County line. With the opening of the Tampa Premium Outlets on S.R. 56 west of I-75, that traffic is expected to worsen during the holiday shopping season.

The S.R. 56/75 interchange was opened over a decade ago, and in 2011 a new ramp was constructed to ease congestion, to the delight of many in the community. However, the two-lane exit is plagued by long lines of vehicles waiting to exit left or right (east or west) onto S.R. 56.

According to FDOT, 26,500 vehicles use the northbound exit onto S.R. 56 daily. Comparatively, only 18,000 vehicles each day are using the Bruce B. Downs exit a few miles south, and 11,000 are using the S.R. 54 exit a few miles north.

For Steven Domonkos, those numbers make it clear that 2020 is not soon enough to make the changes.

“I’m just kind of surprised that FDOT is so far behind the 8-ball on this,’’ said Domonkos, the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC) Economic Development Committee chairman. “This is not like we didn’t know the outlets and (Wiregrass) mall were coming to the area. Not addressing the traffic situation until now is just sort of confusing.”

Domonkos is part of a new three-person transportation task force recently formed by the WCCC. He said the goal of the task force is to gather information and concerns from residents and to “make sure we have a seat at the table” so those concerns can be passed on to FDOT.

Domonkos, who is also the specialty leasing manager for the Shops at Wiregrass Mall, is disappointed at the negative effects he says traffic at the interchange, and in general around the Wesley Chapel and New Tampa area, is having on local businesses.

“We’re getting complaints, we feel like it’s hurting Wesley Chapel, and hurting businesses,’’ Domonkos said. “We definitely plan to make our presence known.”

Domonkos is open to the idea of a DDI. Otherwise, he’s not sure what the solution is.

“I’m not sure there is an answer at this point,’’ he said. “I think the (DDI) will work, but now it’s just a matter of getting FDOT to move the timetable on that.”

Moore said he also is not done pushing a more immediate timetable.

“We’ve had a number of citizen complaints about (the interchange),’’ Moore says. “People need relief in this area. We did express to FDOT we would like the project accelerated.”

Moore said state Rep. Danny Burgess (R-San Antonio) also is pressing the issue, and both are in constant contact with other members of the state legislature to attract allies for future discussions.

“The (DDI) concept is really cool,’’ Moore said. “One of the things we don’t want to do (when it comes to funding) is be detrimental to the other projects that have been on the plan. We don’t want to hinder those. But we need this sooner than later.”